Penguin “Teeth” and “Modern” Birds: Ken Ham’s Misinformed Understanding of Fossil Birds

Errors repeated often enough take on the appearance of truth. This is what makes fake news so effective.   It can drown out informed opinion and accurate information.  At the root of many fake new stories are pieces of information that are either outright false but possibly surrounded with true statements or the facts they report may be accurate within their original context but are reported out of context.  Sometimes news stories are not intended by the author to be fake in any way but because the authors mistakenly rely on incorrect information, what they write propagates misinformation.   This can create significant problems if the authors are trusted by their audiences.  Their audiences are unlikely to question the original source of the information and so assume that the reported facts are accurate.

Examples of erroneous source information combined with constant repeating of that incorrect source information by trusted communicators in particular communities can be readily found in young-earth creationist’  (YEC) literature and presentations.  I’ve provided a few examples in the past. For example:  Lack of Citations: The YEC Peer-Review System Goes Awry Again, and When Peer Review Lets You Down: A YEC Quote Problem.

Recently I encountered additional examples of false claims propagated in Ken Ham’s blog though not necessarily by Ken Ham himself since the post is “written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.” The identical false claims were made the next day by three members of the Answers in Genesis’ FaceBook Live news program.

Our first example comes from Mr Ham’s blog post, “Missing Link Dinosaur” Is Just a Bird.” Here we find Ham downplaying any dinosaur-bird connection.  He acknowledges that many fossil birds found in dinosaur-bearing rocks often have fairly impressive sets of teeth and claws on their wings. These are features of ancient birds that are reptile-like.  But to apparently downplay the reptile-sharing features of these ancient fossil birds he states:

What they found was another fossilized Archaeopteryx specimen—a crow-sized bird with teeth and claws on its wings, as many now-extinct birds had (though penguins still have teeth and hoatzins have claws as juveniles).

Notice the phrase “though penguins still have teeth…”   His lay audience will surely assume that the word “teeth” here has an equivalent meaning to the term “teeth” in reference to fossil birds.  With respect to the function of the teeth, this may be true. The tooth-like projections in a penguin’s mouth–and in the mouth of geese as well–serve a similar function to fossil-bird teeth. However, these are not equivalent to the true teeth of fossil birds. This is like saying that bat wings and bird wings are the same things because they allow a bird and a bat to fly.  Yes, you could call them both wings, but they are produced by very different developmental processes.

Penguin teeth are not developmentally related to teeth in fossil birds which had true enamel and dentin-coated teeth just like reptile and mammals.   I just posted an article a few days ago about bird teeth (A Flock of Genomes Reveals the Toothy Ancestry of Birds) which reveals that modern birds, including penguins, do have genes, albeit broken ones, for making “true” teeth but none of the 10,000 living bird species make true teeth.  Ham’s “penguins still have teeth” claim is just false because he is implying that the teeth-shaped things in a penguins mouth are the same as teeth in fossil birds. (1)

The example above is a relatively minor error which is easily corrected by taking just a few minutes to research penguin teeth. (2)  What really caught my eye was a second claim from the same blog post. This is a claim I have heard many times but it is also false.  The claim is made as an attempt to downplay any evidence that the fossil record supports any evolutionary development of birds over time:

But the author of the article calls these birds “bird-like dinosaurs” because of the supposed evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds (even though modern and now-extinct birds lived at the same time as the dinosaurs, including parrots, loons, owls, flamingos, and more).

This sounds rather impressive for anyone unaware of the extent and nature of fossil birds in dinosaur-bearing rocks.  After all, how could “modern birds” be found with dinosaurs if the ancestors of modern birds were evolving during that time?  But this claim is just wrong and it is wrong in multiple ways. First, for most of the birds mentioned, no such fossils exist.  Second, the term “modern” is undefined but 99% of AiG’s readers will take this to mean that a “modern” parrot from the era of dinosaurs is a parrot similar to one alive today but whose bones are found mixed with dinosaur-bearing rocks.

So, are there fossils of “modern” parrots, loons, owls and flamingos found in dinosaur-era rocks?  The short answer – NO! But are there fossils in dinosaur-bearing rocks of ancestral parrots and flamingos that are recognizable as belonging to those families  or “kinds” as Ken Ham might want to call them or may be thinking in his “modern” term?  The answer is still NO!  There aren’t even any fossils that can be definitely identified as belonging to these families that are found with dinosaurs.

This same claim of “modern birds” living with the dinosaurs was made by three hosts (Georgia Purdom, Avery Foley and Bodies Hodge) of the AIG FB live news team who also commented on the same story about fossil birds. They stated that there are “modern bird” fossils found with dinosaurs including parrots, loon, and flamingos.  They also remarked that penguins have teeth implying that finding fossil birds with teeth were therefore no big surprise.(3)

So what is going on here?  These claims are not supported by the current paleontological literature.  Without even diving deep into the primary literature a quick check of Wikipedia or other general resources would quickly reveal that each of these modern bird claims are in error.

The problem lies in having too much faith in an original YEC source.  No one has vetted that original source and so YEC authors and speakers have copied it into their literature so many times that each of these AiG employees just assume these are observable facts that evolutionary biologists are ignoring.

You can trace the claim back to a Creation Ministries International (CMI) article from 2011 which included the following sentence:  “Contrary to popular belief, modern types of birds have been found, including: parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc.”    The person quoted here is a Dr. Carl Werner, a young-earth creationist’ family physician who had spent years visiting museums looking at fossils and interviewing paleontologists and museum employees.  He published a book in 2009 called Evolution: The Grand Experiment Part II Living Fossils in which he claims to show that many “modern” organisms have fossil counterparts much deeper in the fossil record than evolutionary theory would predict. Most of his data consists of looking at a fossil and finding a living organism that looks like the fossil and then claiming they are related to each other.  None of these claims holds up under even a moderate amount of scrutiny.

Dr. Werner has no obvious training in paleontology other than museum visits but had he read more of the primary paleontological literature he would have realized that his example of a dinosaur age flamingo is nothing more than a common name given to a fossil that has some characteristics of  a modern flamingo. But I can’t find any place where it has been argued that this bird really was a flamingo rather than an ancient bird with some similarities to one.  This is similar to naming a koala a “bear” because it looks a bit like a bear. But koalas are mostly definitely not bears.   The story is similar for loons, for parrots, and for owls.  Are any modern birds found? No!  Are any fossils that are thought to be in the same family of birds mentioned here found with dinosaurs? No.  There are fossils that have distinctly parrot-like features that are as old as 50 million years but interestingly, all possible older  parrot-like fossils don’t have the distinctive parrot-style crushing beak.  I wouldn’t say that “modern” parrot fossils are found in 50 million year old rocks. It would be more accurate to state that the fossil record contains ancestors of modern parrots but not “modern” parrots.

Many fossils for which one bone or a few fragments are found are linked to things they have similarity to, but that does not mean they are really related to them and often future bone discoveries reveal that the bird is very different from the modern group that the first bone was likened to.   These rare bones are a far cry from definitive discoveries of “modern” birds in ancient rocks.  Maybe some definitive fossils from one of these types of birds will be found someday in rocks of dinosaur-era age, but, as it stands today, it is deceptive to suggest that fossils of birds that are the same as birds we have today are found in dinosaur-bearing rocks.

What is most frustrating is that these claims can be so easily checked and corrected. This is another example of a peer-review problem within the YEC community.   YECs have been citing and repeating Dr. Werner’s fossil claims for years despite the fact they are so easily refuted.  If YECs truly believe that the evidence supports their interpretation of Scripture, it would behoove them to avoid using demonstrably false evidence to make their case.

Footnotes:

1. The hoatzin claim is also dubious. Yes they have claws on their wings as juveniles but it is not clear that these “claws” share homology with claws of fossil birds.  It is possible that hoatzin develop these claws  differently than do fossil birds though it doesn’t appear that much work has been done to understand claw development in these birds.  In a way they could be like penguin teeth. They perform a similar function but they develop from a different genetic pathway than do reptile claws.

2. This claim that penguin teeth are “still teeth” as if they are like fossil teeth seems to be rather novel, as noted in the comments below, to Ken Ham or whichever employee fed him the idea.  I don’t see this claim repeated on other YEC websites.

3. Teeth in fossil birds are a bit tricky to incorporate into the young-earth paradigm.  All true-toothed birds are found in rocks of dinosaur age.  YECs consider all these fossils the product of a global flood.  The question then becomes, if there were dozens of “kinds” of birds that lived in the pre-flood world that had teeth, and if Noah preserved each of those lineages on the ark, what happened to them after the Flood? Why are they all extinct today and why have they left no fossil record after departing from the ark?  Why would dozens or more of toothed kinds go extinct and only non-toothed survive?  Furthermore, as my previous article discussed, why do non-toothed birds all have genes for making teeth and yet all of those “kinds” of birds don’t make teeth nor is there any fossil record of any of them having had teeth in the past?  I believe the tooth problem is in the mind of Ken Ham and other members of AiG when they insert into their discussion “and penguins still have teeth” as if to imply that teeth in birds are no big deal.

An osprey taking off from its nest on the outer banks of North Carolina. Osprey are birds of prey and have impressive beaks but they don’t have teeth and birds of prey are not known in the fossil record until after the dinosaurs disappeared. Image credit: Joel Duff

88 thoughts on “Penguin “Teeth” and “Modern” Birds: Ken Ham’s Misinformed Understanding of Fossil Birds”

  1. Creationists, I fear, don’t even want to purge their echo chamber of its straw men and zombie arguments. I used to think they were merely deluded, but am now coming to consider that that they are also dishonest

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  2. As you note at the end of the article, YECs have not explained why no tooth-bearing birds survived the Flood. Even harder for them to explain is why we don’t see lots of toothless birds in the Mesozoic, when we should see lots of them, and many species of them, if their view is correct. None of their oft-repeated explanations for fossil succession (eco zonation, hydro sorting, and differential escape abilities) begin to explain it. I think you may be giving Ham and friends too much credit, for assuming they are just repeating an old YEC source about penguin teeth. That no modern birds have true teeth is such a well known scientific fact that it’s likely they know it too, and just hope that many of their readers don’t. Another thing they have trouble explaining is why many modern many birds show teeth during embryonic development, and/or have been shown to have latent genetic coding for true teeth. They can try to rationalize it in their illogical “hyperspeciation” claims, but those have been shown to be contradicted by many lines of evidence.

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    1. You may be right about giving them credit for using an old source. I’ve been doing some more searching and now I realize that the “modern” birds claim has been around for a while and used by many YEC sources but the “penguins still have teeth” claim may be a novelty here. Ham said it and then on the FB live they mentioned penguins but I’m not finding other sources of that claim. My guess is that it comes from Bodie Hodge.

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      1. “but the “penguins still have teeth” claim may be a novelty here. Ham said it and then on the FB live they mentioned penguins but I’m not finding other sources of that claim.”

        Penguins do have spiny structures on their tongues and throat to keep food in their mouth (not teeth though!). Maybe YECs once again misrepresent what’s actually there.
        Image: https://mostlytruestoriesofkrenaep.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/penguintongue.jpg

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      1. Paul, Here’s one: Mutant Chicken Grows Alligatorlike Teeth, by David Biello on February 22, 2006
        https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mutant-chicken-grows-alli/
        The original paper is:
        Harris, Matthew P.; et al. (2006), “The Development of Archosaurian First-Generation Teeth in a Chicken Mutant”, Current Biology, 16 (4): 371–377, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2005.12.047, PMID 16488870
        Paleontologist Jack Horner published a book called How to Build a Dinosaur where he talks about bringing back dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals through genetic manipulation or “reverse evolution.” Of course, according to most paleontologists, we already have dinosaurs living among us (they’re called birds). More and more evidence seems to be showing that birds are just a branch of feathered theropod dinosaurs that survived the K-T extinction and further diversified afterward. https://www.popsci.com/science-behind-jurassic-world-closer-reality-youd-think
        A good summary of the evidence for common descent that you may already be aware of is at:
        https://howlingpixel.com/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent#cite_note-42

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  3. I wonder how YECs would explain the activation protein experiments that show how birds can develop real teeth? When mouse cells are grafted to chicken embryos, they provide the activation proteins for the development of real teeth. Birds who naturally produce a mutation to form teeth typically are not viable. The mouse cell experiment is fascinating in revealing the genetic atavism in birds for teeth. This pretty much destroys ham’s argument without having to answer the spurious and often repeated question, “were you there?”

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    1. Excellent observation. Taking it another step further, it also asks why would all bird lineages have this “genetic activism.” Common ancestry with a loss in the ancestor of function is an easy answer but for YECs, there are 196 separately-created living kinds of birds (according to AiG – Jean Lightner) that share no common ancestry. Maybe a YEC could say that a few of these had teeth in the original creation and then lost them due to mutations (degradation of the original perfect genome) but did God really created all 196 different kinds with teeth and all 196 lost their teeth due to mutations? Surely at least one lineage would have kept teeth because they were functionally important to them.

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    2. These experiments have been done. And interestingly, the Bauplan for dentition is still present, but not the enamel genes. So, the teath can never be covered by enamel. This is simply the law of “use it or lose it”. It also shows that the dentition Bauplan (which is normally repressed) is independent of the enamel genes. The Bauplan is in the non-protein coding part of the genome, not in protein coding genes. Apparently, the birds did not have to preserve these genes, since they had another system working for the same function. I am a specialist in regulatory networks and it may be argued the two developing systems interfered. Two systems for one function make redundancies and one of them will have to disappear. Like the teeth of balleen whales. Balleen whales also have the enamel genes, but interrupted by a transposon. Still, we find in the fossil record the Aetiocetus, which had teath and balleens. This is a “hopeful monster” and its redundancy is in clear support of the baranome hypothesis, where these programs can be derepressed simultaneously and do not have to evolve independently by random mutations and natural selection. Everything in biology is controlled and regulated. Evolution also. There is nothing in Darwins book in support if its grandiose title. Creationists, both YECs and OECs, should work together to set up the right biological theory.

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  4. As expected, major YEC groups dispute the evidence for embryonic and atavistic teeth in birds
    https://creation.com/chickens-with-teeth
    https://creation.com/Teeth-developing-in-bird-embryosmdashdoes-it-prove-evolution
    https://www.icr.org/article/facts-bite-into-bird-tooth-story
    http://www.icr.org/article/8516/

    YECs also seem paranoid about admitting the existence of feathered dinosaurs, even though there is no reason why the creator could not put feathers on a dinosaur. But even some YECs are comming around to accepting feathered dinosaurs.

    https://siriusknotts.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/can-a-dinosaur-have-feathers/

    Another YEC recently wrote a longer article outright challenging his fellow YECs to accept the overwhelming evidence that some dinosaurs has feathers. I thought I bookmarked it but now can’t find it. Does anyone else have the link?

    An interesting summary of YEC confusion and misrepresentation on dino-bird evoution:
    http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/creationists_and_dinosaurs_answers_in_genesis_teams_with_dissident_scientists_to_deny_feathered_dino_fossil_record.html

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    1. https://creation.com/chickens-with-teeth is interesting. It accepts that modern birds may have evolved from toothed ancestors, and retain part of the relevant ancestral genetic information, but maintains that all of this is within the bird “created kind” and therefore not an example of evolution:

      “Stripped of evolutionary assumptions, it shows that the gene pool of the chicken’s created kind included the capacity to generate teeth. In other words, the genetic flexibility (variety) existed in the original gene pool to generate daughter populations in which some had teeth, some didn’t.”

      So now we know. Some chickens, strangely absent from the fossil record, did have teeth, despite being of the same chicken kind as the surviving toothless ones.

      So now we have a clear prediction from creation science: ancestral chickeny chickens with teeth await discovery.

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  5. Here’s the article I was thinking of, where Todd Wood urges his fellow YECs to accept the overwhelming evidence that some dinosaurs had feathers.
    https://toddcwood.blogspot.com.br/2016/12/god-made-dinosaurs-with-beautiful.html
    What most other YECs tend to do is claim that most supposed feathers on dinosaurs are not really feathers, and any are real feathers, then the animal is by definition a bird (even if the rest of it’s anatomy screams dinosaur). Of course, by that tactic nothing ever could be a dino-bird intermediate, but that’s semantic game playing, not science.

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    1. The semantics are no mere game, but crucial to the creationists’ absolutist philosophy. If bird and dinosaur are different kinds, then of course any specimen must be one or the other, and one cannot be descended from the other, because that would mean that there were parents of one kind and offspring of the other, which is absurd.

      Compare, Latin and Italian are different languages. Therefore it I could not possibly have evolved from Latin, because if it had, that would mean that parents speaking one language had offspring speaking another, which is absurd.

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    2. Yes, Todd Wood as usual sees the problem so much more clearly and provides the obvious YEC solution but other YECs just don’t seem to want to acknowledge him. What perplexes me is that YECs insist on the bible as the final word and if the bible doesn’t tell us about a particular event in history we are told “you weren’t there” and that we can’t trust historical science but them they turn around and seem to think that God decreed that only birds have feathers. Where is the bible verse that says that? If they had never seen a bat they would probably believe that mammals can’t fly – only birds can. There taxonomic decisions lack any cohesive criteria. What seems to be most important is that once they have proclaimed something (once Ken Ham has proclaimed something) then all future fossils finds must be crammed into that first proclamation. They are in too deep now and can’t turn the titanic around.

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  6. “What is most frustrating is that these claims can be so easily checked and corrected.”

    I think they neither want to check nor correct those claims. Willful ignorance is allergic to fact-checking.

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    1. I checked the claims of both camps. And I am compelled to conclude that both darwinian and special creation scenarios are genetically untenable. That-s why I set up a frontloaded theory, which explains and predicts correcty. Only the YECs were openminded, thus far. as I was able to publish in their media. I have had the most severe opposition from theistic evolutionists, Darwinians by education. The debate is not evolution versus creation, but science versus darwinism.

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  7. The compulsion of creationists to pigeon-hole all theropod fossils as “dinosaur” or “bird” is misguided and futile, as well evidenced by the fact that they can’t even agree on which is which. A classic case is Archaeopteryx, which many YECs claim is a 100% bird, while others such as Walt Brown and Ian Taylor argue is just a small dinosaur onto which someone pressed fake feather impressions (something thoroughly refuted by many lines of evidence). Likewise, YECs insist all hominids are either apes, or “fully human” even though again, they can’t agree on which are which. What better evidence that the specimens actually show many intermediate features, which is in fact the case. Archaeopteryx shows many features intermediate between a typical theropod and a modern bird, besides it’s obvious teeth, clawed wings, and long bony tail; likewise, hominids such as Homo erectus and Homo habilis clearly show many features intermediate between earlier hominids and modern humans. And in all of these and countless other cases, the fossils occur in expected geologic horizons, and not all mixed up, as YECism would predict, even if they were separate “kinds.”

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  8. Just want to say thank you for this article. I read them all. Makes so much sense and gives me memorable arguments when discussing with YEC’s–which I once was, because I did not know any other option.

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    1. Gutti, I am involved in evolution education, and so I would really find it helpful to know (and so I am sure would others here) where you were educated without learning about evolution, how you were shielded from exposure to evolution science, how you eventually came across it, and how you felt about it. thanks

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      1. Hi Paul. Happy to to be of any help and having a chance to write my story.

        I live in the Faroe Islands, a small North Atlantic country and was raised a Lutheran, attending our state Church. At Sundays in church the evolution topic was rarely mentioned and my mother and father never mentioned it or any problem regarding it. It was not really on their mind.

        My first school years, up to 13 years of age, were in the only Catholic owned school on our islands, the “nun-school”, as we called it.

        I was not shielded from evolution or the Big Bang theory, but when initially exposed to those, my reaction negative. First exposure to an Old Earth was in my sixth or seventh grade (around 1979 at the age of 12-13) when our teacher in geography told us that the origin of our islands was volcanic activity – and that sent me in a one-two years deep crisis of faith. Because, I resoned – didn’t God create our islands?
        My reasoning was also that if the Creation story in Genesis was not true, as the teacher implied (well–he didn’t say that!) then how can I trust the rest of the Bible?

        What kept my faith throuch this very difficult time, was the deep peace of knowing Christ in my heart.
        I remember thinking: “I feel God Presence, so He must be real. So hopefully there must be a solution to this terrible crisis.”

        I also vent to visit my Lutheran parish priest to hopefully resolve my crisis. He was a fine teologian, but he could not really see why anyone should have a crisis of faith over the theory of evolution/old earth issue. He offered no intellectual solution (and no mention of early Church writings) but suggested to me, why I not just believe the Creation account and discard the evolution issue altogether! I was very disappointed by his proposal, because how could I possibly throw away reason and logic? No real help there.

        But there was a small Christian pentecostal bookstore in town, so I hesitatingly went in there, and bought a book “Creation or Evolution” by a professor H. Enoch.

        I read it, and it gave a solution to my faith crisis and my faith was saved. I also ordered the “Genesis Flood” by Morris and Whitcomb and read some of the book.

        So for the next ten years I rejected evolution and Big Bang and promoted a Young Earth view in school too. But after getting hold of the book “Reason, Science and Faith” by Marsdon and Forster, I completely changed my view on evolution – mostly because in that book I saw how the Jews and the Early Church read the Creation account. The writings of the Early Church were (and are) seldom mentioned or discussed in our Lutheran society.
        It took three days to ponder and change my mind on the issue and I remember having pain in my stomac for the duration of those days!
        But a relief it was not to be fearful or resentful of science anymore. Whether it be archeology, biology or any other field. Now I could see a mainstream television program on the life of the dinosaurs and just enjoy it!

        For many years after my discovery though, I was not completely sure which position to take.

        I few times I have been met with distrust by fellow Christians after telling them that I thought if fine to believe that God created life through evolution.

        Today it does not bother me much being set under suspicion from some of my fellow Christians. I just shake my head a little that adults can be so uninformed or illogical – or how to describe this state of mind – in the age of the internet. But I am concerned by how the fake creation/evolution controversy impacts non-Christians.

        Though I bear with the young earth creationists – I once was one myself.

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        1. Gutti, thanks so much for sharing your story. I’m always struck by the many ways in which people have experienced changes in convictions with respect to their understanding of creation. I don’t have Marston and Forster book. I may need to add that one to my collection. Thanks again for your story.

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        2. Thanks, that’s extremely useful information. I was brought up as a traditionalist Jew, and one of the many reasons that I so strongly dislike creationism is the utter incomprehension it shows of the nature and function of the beautiful many-layered text.

          I note that Forster is prominent in the Evangelical Alliance, and have ordered a cheap copy of the book through Alibris (whom I use when I can to preserve the independents against the tentacles of Amazon)

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    2. Hi Gutti, Thanks for the encouraging word. I am glad you found them useful. Best wishes to you as you continue to explore and ponder God’s creation. The transition away from YEC can be difficult because it provides such a comfortable set of answers in a complicated world but over time I think that a fully image of God’s sovereignty, creative power, and the story of redemption becomes evident when the unnecessarily restrictive box of the YEC world is removed.

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  9. By his stance Ken Ham is – whether he intends to be or not – anti-science, anti-knowledge and anti evidence:
    https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2018/02/05/missing-link-dinosaur-just-bird/
    Archaeopteryx was once classified as an extinct bird (very old and unlike modern birds), now it’s classified as a bird-like dinosaur. Yet Ham simply cannot countenance that birds are descended from some dinosaurs. Because the Bible suggests birds were created separately from non-flying land animals – not because of evidence.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

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  10. Ham’s relying on the Bible for taxonomic guidance causes other problems too. For example, bats are listed among the “fowl”. Enough said. Likewise, since many ancient and modern birds are flightless, distinguishing birds and dinos based on whether they are “terrestrial” or “flying” animals doesn’t work either. Pterosaurs (flying reptiles) are not even mentioned in the Bible, even tho they were a large and diverse group (unless you count the highly dubious interpretations of the “fiery serpents” claimed by some YECs to be pterosaurs, but which are more likely just poisonous and/or reddish snakes. Then again, a few YECs like Carl Baugh and Jon Whitcomb (no, not the Genesis Flood author) claim pterosaurs are still with us, and even glow in the dark. I recently updated my long critique on that issue. If you’re interested (I’d appreciate any feedback–I know I need to shorten it up), it’s at: http://paleo.cc/paluxy/livptero.htm

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  11. I made an example out of Answers in Genesis on Quora.com as I can tell with your article that Ken Ham is going to be flat out torqued. Look up Creation Museum on Urban Dictionary and Answers in Genesis on the same site as Flood Geology is defined as they are made into self-righteous clowns on the site.

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  13. On the claim of Mesozoic parrots, there was a claim from a conventional paleontologist that a tiny Cretaceous bone was a jawbone from a lory. Phylogenetically this is highly implausible – lories are derived within the parrots, and a more recent review notes that the supposed distinctive features have not been validated by thorough comparative analysis; the specimen is more likely to be a dinosaur beak.

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  14. For more about the alleged Cretaceous parrot fossil, see:
    https://qilong.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/a-cretaceous-parrot/
    The specimen is a single partial lower jaw fragment that most workers are not even sure is from a bird-ancestor let alone a lorry or parrot, and which they say may well belong to any number of other non-avian dinosaurs, Yet YECs casually refer to Cretaceous “parrots”– and are likely to keep parroting the claim for many years to come. Of course, even if it were an early parrot, it would not refute evolution, especially since the fossil occurs near the end of the Cretaceous, by which time other bird lineages had developed. In contrast, if YECism were true, there should be lots of modern birds of many species throughout the fossil record, or at least from the time we find early birds, rather than all the toothed toothed, long-tailed, clawed early birds we do find (besides the feathered dinosaurs–making any line between them quite indistinct). Of course, this is just one of countless features of the fossil record they cannot explain.

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    1. Glen and David, thanks for the additional information. I had heard about the parrot fossil before but couldn’t put my fingers on that info when I wrote the article. YECs are able to get away with such blatant misrepresentation of the fossil record because there audience has no grasp of just what the fossil record looks like.

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  16. Wow, Ken Ham on his blog just doubled down on his claim. The only reason he could have followed up his statements was in response to this post but incredibly he just repeats the exact same claim and refers to Werner and providing the proof. This is really sad because I had pointed out how easy it would be for him to check Werner’s claims but apparently he has no time to be sure he is giving out good information. Here is the most relevant quote: “And, contrary to what the article states, these ducks are certainly not the only example of modern birds buried with dinosaurs. We find fossilized parrots, albatrosses, loons, owls, flamingos, penguins, sandpipers, and more buried in the same layers as dinosaurs. And one evolutionary researcher claimed that such evidence supports the idea that “most or all of the major modern bird groups were present in the Cretaceous” (a so-called “dinosaur layer”). While these fossils are rarely displayed in museums, they exist and are a serious challenge to the evolutionary timeline.”

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  17. To all here who believe the universe was created with&for a purpose: you are all creationists. As creationists you should join up and help write a novel theory of biology, which is in accord with biology and creation. Biology is in need of a new theory, we all know. What you should not do is set up camps, which will surely not help building His Kingdom. Creation scientists should immediately ban Darwin from their thoughts and start thinking for themselves and come up with better ideas. Like Dr Werner does. He could be right about many fossils. What his analyses also reveal is that over and over “Nature” invents the same solutions. Why? Because we are dealing with predetermined frontloaded (epi)genetic mechanisms. Evolution by law, if you wish. If you would start looking into the genetics of teeth programs (enamel-related genes) you will find them in all birds. Some still use these programs and hence they are conserved. Others do not use them and the prorgrams have been epigenetically switched of or lost due to random mutations. The latter is what we see in chicken:

    https://bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/1471-2148-8-246?site=bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.com

    What we miss are bird-specific genes. That is not because they do not exist. They are missing because the Darwinians are not looking for them. It is not in their program, mindset, and education system. They are only looking for similarities (you cannot built evolutionary trees from unique genes).
    Darwinian Biology is completely similarity-biased and not interested in real understanding.

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    1. Peer, You define Creationist very broadly, so may I ask, how much evolution do you accept, and how old do you think the Earth is? At any rate, why would you say that Biology is in need of a new theory, let alone that we “all know it”? I gather this is your way of slamming evolution, even though it is a very well supported explanation for the fossil record and diversity of life as we find it. You suggest that creationists put Darwin out of their minds. Why, when the core of his theory was natural selection? Even many YECs accept natural selection to some extent, they just want to limit what it can do –tht is, how much change it can produce, even though they have no viable mechanism for such a barrier.. Even AIG’s Jeanson in his long and disjointed article on hyperspeciation, admitted that his only basis for limiting speciation was his interpretation of Genesis.
      As Joel and others have pointed out, the “front-loaded” diversity concept as an explanation for hyperspeciation or “rapid post Flood diversification” doesn’t hold any water. The main reason is that whatever initial diversity you want to propose at Creation, after the Flood (assuming you believe in a global Flood) all land animals (or most, depending on how you read the “clean” animals passage) would have been reduced to a single pair or “kind.” That is about as extreme a genetic bottleneck as you can get. It means there would only be at most 4 alleles per gene, and thus very little diversity to work with. Animals like the cheetah which suffered a less extreme genetic bottle neck, are still suffering from it thousands of years later. The only way to gain a significant number of new alleles is through mutation and natural selection, which is “new information” and evolution by any reasonable definition. Moreover, YECs not only need many new alleles, but need them to occur at breakneck speed (within a few hundred years, as Ham himself says), despite having no mechanism for that (natural selection works fine, but not at that speed). All of this flies in the face of Dr Wermer’s claims.
      How are teeth “bird specific” genes? Your derisive comments about “Darwinists” and their supposed close-mindedness in genetics is ironic. Virtually all mainstream biologists I know of enjoy exploring new ideas, and will accept or reject them according to where the evidence leads. In contrast, many YECs only to look for evidence that supports their preconceived views

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      1. We have to accept as much as evolution as is required to explain the biological observations. Remember that universal common descent is not based in observation, but rather find its origin in naturalistic philosophy. The biological facts are contrary to this idea. Think about the sex systems…the are of Independent origin and cannot be reduced to one original. So there must be more than one origin.
        Frontloaded evolutionary theories can either be general and full blown, i.e. start with a single frontloaded single celled organism containing all information (but they do not explain the observations), while more restricted special frontloaded theories explain what we observe. I have worked and published the baranome hypothesis about a decade ago, and this theory works quit well for an extended range of related organisms. One could argue, based on genetic frontloading, that the marsupials are all descendends from one original marsupial baranome. There is (limited) evidence for this option. One can also argue that alle wallabies formed from one baranome (there is more evidence for this Option). It requires a lot of whole genome comparisons, and we are going in that direction, now. Ultimately, these analyses may show the hard demarcations between baranomes.
        I discussed so many Darwinians invain. Try to discuss the idea of non-random genetic changes with your Darwinian colleagues. Or frontloaded evolutionary theories. Or the origin of Information. The first gene, etc. They will not go beyond random mutations and selection, that, while we know these two cannot spawn a single gene.

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  18. As a follow up question “Peer,” let me ask: what do you consider a “bird specific gene”? Likewise, can you tell us what specific features you believe separates irds from feathered theropods? When I recently asked this of Todd Wodd, who claimed that such distinctions exist, all he did was point me to an article he wrote on bird “baraminology.” Unfortunately, while the article showed a number of confusing graphs (where the axes and most data points were not even identified), and his reasons why he considered certain bird groups were separate “kinds,” he did not say one word about what specifically separates a dinosaur from a bird. Can you help on that? If you merely define as a bird any animal with feathers, it’s a pointless tautology. After all, couldn’t the creator put feathers on different “kinds” of animals? Moreover, since the fossil records shows many Mesozoic theropods with intermediate features, or only some features of modern birds, how is that not evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs? One could make the same points with various groups of fish, reptiles, mammals, and other groups as well, and recommending that people not think too much about Darwin isn’t going to make that evidence go away, or help them arrive at a well reasoned view of Earth histroy.

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    1. The genomes of birds demonstrate millions of non-protein coding genetic elements not present in other organisms.

      https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14229

      We are dealing with bird-specific sequences, novel Information found not only as protein coding genes, but the majority as genetic switsches and regulatory units which determine the roadmap of building a bird. This Roadmap is what Darwinians should pay attention to: there is Bauplan in the non-protein-coding part of the Genome. The major part of the genome forms a very robust Bauplan in which proteincoing genes are nothing but the tools, the work horses. I have been trying to communicate this to the Darwinian community but there is only silence, because they require that the non-protein-coding part of the Genome is non-functional junk.

      The Creator frontloaded the tools to make feathers (keratin genes are all that is required and present in all animals, btw) but did not frontload the Bauplan in all animals. The Genome has different levels of Information. It has information for tools (all animals have about the same set of Tools) and there is higher Information how the tools have to work together to get the Bauplan out. There is hardly any junk in the Bauplan, which is 4 dimensional and very hard to study because of its robustness (due to redundancy in the elements it is made of). The Genome can be understood as Islands of coding Information (Tools) in a sea of regulatory elements (Bauplan). Now, you all better think about this and leave the Darwinian Hypothesis for what it is (a debunked 19th century philosophy). What we need is biologists, who dare to think out of the box.

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      1. “I have been trying to communicate this to the Darwinian community but there is only silence, because they require that the non-protein-coding part of the Genome is non-functional junk.”

        Not so. These days, best practice is to reserve the term “junk DNA” for that part of the non-coding DNA that BOTH has no known function AND ALSO is not under selection pressure, suggesting that its specific sequence is truly functionless.

        However, The importance of non-coding regulatory genes, which I think is what is at issue here, has been known for decades; see e.g. http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674%2808%2900817-9

        And BTW, calling biologists in general “Darwinian” is as out-of-date, in its way, as calling physicists in general “Newtonian”

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        1. How do you know it has no function? There is function we cannot detect, such as variation. Most TEs are what I have coined variation-inducing genetic elements (VIGEs). The biggest science stopper of all biology are related to non-function hypotheses. Starting with rudimentary organs…selfish DNA

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          1. peer, I did not say “has no function.” I said, choosing my words carefully, “BOTH has no known function AND ALSO is not under selection pressure, suggesting that its specific sequencee is truly functionless” [empasis now added]. This states the reasons for thinking the sequence has no function, but does not close the door on future discoveries to the contrary. Moreover, it explicitly allows for functions in packing and handling, where specific sequence may not matter.

            I do not appreciate being strawmanned, and will add you to my “Do not reply” list

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            1. Both…and. Good. No worries, you will not be strawmanned. I am not like that. Still you seem to know that it has no known function. That is, btw, why it is most likely frontloaded, redundant information which determines and stabilizes the Bauplan. It does not seem to have function, only because we cannot deetct it due to manyfold redundancy (for instance, there are millions of TEs in the genome to stabilize the Bauplan). Such info can also not yet be in the appropriate genetic context.There are huge stretches of DNA, millions of nucleotides, in the genome that seem to have no function, as they be deleted without detectable phenotypes. Still, they are conserved (present in unrelated organisms). Such sequences sometimes can become involved in diseases, like cancers. It demonstrates that frontloading theory is the correct theory of life.

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      2. Peer, You wrote: “The genomes of birds demonstrate millions of non-protein coding genetic elements not present in other organisms.” The problem is, you can’t know this is the case for Mesozoic dinosaurs. Indeed, you did not answer one of my key question,s which is what unique traits do you believe separate dinosaurs from birds? You talk about feathers and feather genes, but there is strong evidence that some theropods had feathers, and based on lots of other evidence, that modern birds are in fact a branch of feathered dinosaurs. So again, what specific traits do you believe separate birds from dinosaurs? Last, what exactly do you mean by “Darwinian hypothesis.” Again, natural selection is a well established mechanism for adaptation, and the fossil record clearly shows that organisms changed in many significant ways over time.

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        1. Natural selection is not a mechanism for adaptation. The adaptation is genetic and instant. First you need the genetics, then comes natural selection. But it only selects what is selectable. A major part of the coding genome is redundant, only a minor part can be selected, therefore. Also read my paper on redundancy:

          Click to access j22_2_79-84.pdf

          Redundancy is inherent to 2N genomes and sexual reproduction.

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          1. Peer, you say “adaptation is genetic and instant.” That’s self-contradictory. Adaptation needs to be gradual in most cases, because environments often change gradually. Even if they changed quickl;y, by what mechanism would “instant” adaptation take place. I have a background in biology, and instead of getting enlightenment from your papers, I find them as confusing and inscrutable as your posts here. You imply that you accept natural selection, but evidently don’t think it produces adaptation. Then what does it do? You say selection selects the selectable. Yes, of course, and that consistent with conventional views on evolution and adaptation. Natural selection selects mutations or genetic combinations that are best suited to an environment, and thus allow an organism to adapt. Biology 101. It’s not an assumption as you imply, but well established. You keep talking about “front loading,” but then state “I do not have to postulate initial diversity.” If front-loading is not initial diversity, what is it? Just when and how did all the supposed front-loaded diversity arise? I’ve asked you a number of times how you can preserve “front-loaded diversity” at the time of the Flood, when land animals were reduced to pairs, creating horrendous genetic bottlenecks. As a biologist you should know the devastating and long lasting effects of such bottlenecks. I’ve asked you repeatedly if you accept the Flood. If you won’t answer that or other direct questions in a direct manner, how can we have a productive dialog?

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            1. You are mixing up Evolution with Darwinism. The adaptation is genetic or epigenetic. It does not have to provides the indivual with an increased reproduction rate. As long as it is able to reproduce in its own niche it is okay. In fact natural selection is nothing but differential reproduction, struggle for existence. It is not required for evolution, because evolution is the unleashing of preformed information. Novel beak shapes, novel colorations, novel forms. It is all implicitly determined by the Bauplan and can be adapted easily through activity of TEs and chromsomerestructering. Most genetic changes do not affect reproduction and spread by drift. De Vries, Bateson and many other geneticists of the 19th century knew this. It was well established. If you want to know more about this old but forgotten knowledge read John Davisons Evolutionary Manifesto, because the Details of molecualr biology show the preformationists/saltationists are probably right:

              Click to access 06_Science_Essay_Evolution_Davison_Manifesto_Evolutionary.pdf

              If you have Background in biology, let me ask you this: How are the hundreds of differentiated cells of the human Body produced from one single cell? If you understand that is is via epigenetic repression and derepression of frontloaded genetic information, then there will hardly be problem to understanding how species are produced from a single frontloaded baranome (pluripotent, uncommited genome of created kinds). Evolution by Law.

              If you know anything about bottle necks, you also know that experiments with round worms show that bottle necks are not really a problem for biology. Variation is generated within a few decades by the Genome itself. Pre flood organisms may have predominantly reproduced asexually (gynogenetically), bringen forth novel species in single events. We know from real biology that the sex systems and the origin of gametes are non-homologou and must have evolved independently, so it must have been gynogenetically.

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      3. Peer, you wrote: The genomes of birds demonstrate millions of non-protein coding genetic elements not present in other organisms. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14229

        As I said before, this only applies to living birds. Moreover, the paper fully supports the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs. Indeed, besides the genetic evidence they cite, there is extensive anatomic and fossil evidence to support that. Yet you seem to believe that dinosaurs and birds were separate creations, even though you haven’t been able to cite even one trait that separates them.

        You claim that evolutionists insist that non-protein coding genes must be useless junk, but that’s demonstrably false. The very paper you cited (and many others) recognize many functions or potential functions of non-protein coding genes, especially in development and gene regulation.

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  19. Gklen, you say: “The main reason is that whatever initial diversity you want to propose at Creation, after the Flood (assuming you believe in a global Flood) all land animals (or most, depending on how you read the “clean” animals passage) would have been reduced to a single pair or “kind.”

    “I do not have to postulate initial diversity, because the diversity a function of DNA sequences and come to light only through restructering of preexisting sequences. We cannot pre-identify them as “Information” and we cannot predict the variability because we are not dealing with cryptic programs, but with position effects, which determine the order of events. This is the Bauplan.

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  20. Peer, You’re tossing around a lot of jargon without answering the key questions I asked (at least not in any way I can understand, and am sure I am not alone). Who says we have to “pre-identify” information, and ore predicti variability? I didn’t, and don’t recall others here doing either. My point was that new genetic information has to be produced to get from the very low diversity at the time of the Flood to the extensive diversity we see today. Indeed, if you accept a YE timetable, you need for it to happen at a breakneck speed, without any viable mechanism. To be more specific, to get from at most 4 alleles per gene in most “kinds” as they departed the ark to the dozens of alleles for many traits that exist in organisms today, you have to have lots of new alleles formed, which again, is new information and evolution by any reasonable definition. How can that not be the case? That’s true even if you don’t hold to a YE timetable. But as I asked before, to help avoid misunderstandings, please clarify how old you think the Earth is, and how much evolution you accept. You keep railing against “Darwinism” but don’t clarify what you mean by that, or whether you accept natural selection. Thank you.

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    1. Glen, you do not need novel information, only the formation or derepression of preexisting information which forms new Bauplans. It is therefore that all organisms have about the same toolkit (20000 genes). In addition to that there is the Bauplan, which is deteremined by the 3D configuration of all DNA sequences in space. Derepression is achieved by an intrinsic reconfiguration of the chromosomes. When the karyotype chnages the Bauplan changes due to 3D spatial restructuring. Also be aware that an allele in not novel information. It is variation on preexisting information, like Information, infoormation, infrmation, iformation. These words are all alleles of ‘information’. Some alleles work, others don-t. Evolution is not about alleles. Mendels genetics is about alleles. Mendels rules of dominance and recessiveness can easily be understood from alleles. Evolution is about new information. Information, Hypothesis, Neuron, Heart. That sort of unrelated non-allelelic words. I would define Darwinism is the hypothesis in which novel information arises through an selectable accumulation of genetic noise. It is what most poeple believe nowadays, but we know it is plain wrong, because it cannot explain novel information. What is information? Non-allelic de novo meaningful DNA sequences, and its emerging properties (which we cannot predict upfront). Like the 1100 novel gene families present in flowering plants not found in other plants and its spatial configurations. Like the 2000 genes for sexual reproduction in Dictiostelium. That sort of Information. That is not addressed by Darwinian hypotheses. So, we better start to explain evolution in a non-darwinian way.

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  21. Peer wrote: “We have to accept as much as evolution as is required to explain the biological observations.” I agree, but that means that we have to accept evolution from the first life forms to what we have today, since that’s what the biological evidence (reinforced with paleontological evidence) strongly indicates. That includes compelling evidence for natural selection. If you accept natural selection, why do you keep bashing “Darwinism?”. If you don’t accept natural selection, how are you going to get any meaningful evolution? You suggest that only one or a few marsupial kinds evolved into all the marsupial species we see today. They’d also have had to evolve into all the others we find in the fossil record. How exactly would that occur, and how would the many species adapt to their specific or changing environments, without natural selection? You keep talking about front-loaded diversity, but have not directly answered my question of how that would work, when any pre-Flood diversity would have been largely destroyed and reduced to severe bottle-necks after the Flood. As I asked before, do you even believe in a recent global Flood? You say you’ve published on the “baranome hypothesis.” Can you please cite the paper, so we may properly evaluate your arguments and evidence? Last, as I asked before, since you suggest there are clear distinctions between dinosaurs and birds, please explain what exactly those differences are.

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    1. “I agree, but that means that we have to accept evolution from the first life forms to what we have today, since that’s what the biological evidence (reinforced with paleontological evidence) strongly indicates.”

      Certainly not. Scientific evidence is not the same as scientific hypothesis. What we have to be aware of all the time is that observations are interpreted in a naturalistic framework and under several unproven assumptions (axiomata). Within the current evolutionary (Darwinian) framework Life arose only once and all life is thus monophyletic. This is merely an assumption. The biological evidence demonstrates polyphyly (for the sex systems for instance), so life is not monophyletic. Now either, we have to built that into our scentific theory or we propagate non-science.
      Zou ask how exactly would marsupial evolution occur from one single baranome. Fairlz easy. How does the fertiliyed egg (zygote) produce thousands of differenttiated cells, heart cells, liver cells, immune cells, neurones? Through the epigenetic process of derepression of preexisting genetic programs all cells of the body form from a single cell. Likewise, the marsupials formed from one single primordial organisms. Derepression through intrinsic genetic processes, which non-randomly restructered the genome. Through the restructuring novel genetic contexts arise, which provide the novel Bauplans. Evolution of novel species is in fact nothing but an emerging phenomen through derepression of hidden Bauplans. The spawning of novel adapted species is a property of the Urgenome (the baranome). Because of this, repopulation the world after a worldwide flood with thousands of novel species would not really be a big deal. Only for darwinians it would be trouble, because their (false) theory requires it. The real evodebate is between science and Darwinism.

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      1. Peer, you wrote: Zou ask how exactly would marsupial evolution occur from one single baranome. Fairlz easy. How does the fertiliyed egg (zygote) produce thousands of differenttiated cells, heart cells, liver cells, immune cells, neurones? Through the epigenetic process of derepression of preexisting genetic programs all cells of the body form from a single cell. Likewise, the marsupials formed from one single primordial organisms.”

        Talk about applies and oranges… This is the same insultingly absurd analogy Jeason tried to make in his long paper on speciation. Obviously development is entirely different from evolution. For one thing, you need zero new alleles to go from a zygote to an adult, whereas you need thousands of new alleles to produce hundreds of new species from the four alleles you’d be reduced to in a “kind” after the Flood. That core problem is not going to be solve by vague tech-no babble such as “epigenetic process of derepression of preexisting genetic programs.” Do you really believe all marsupials arose from one ancestral marsupial (or even a non-marsupial) “organism,” and that this did not even involve evolution? You really think happens in the same way a zygote grows into an adult? Wow.

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        1. “For one thing, you need zero new alleles to go from a zygote to an adult, whereas you need thousands of new alleles to produce hundreds of new species from the four alleles you’d be reduced to in a “kind” after the Flood.”

          This is the neodarwinian approach, but it is wrong. Evolution has nothing to do with alleles. It is such an outdated view on the genome. I argues earlier why evolution has nothing to do with alleles: Evolution is differential regulation of the same blocks of genetics. It is regulatory. Same genetic stuff put in another genetic context. A gene (or an allele) is a small sequence-island in a sea of regulatory elements, which all affect the ultimate expression of that Island. The expression is affected by addition and deletion of regulatory elements, transposon-like sequences. These sequences are Promoters, silencers and enhancers. The genome is completely stuffed with such sequences. Alleles only play a minor, fine tuning role in Variation. The activity of thousands of TEs is what evolution drives.

          “Do you really believe all marsupials arose from one ancestral marsupial (or even a non-marsupial) “organism,” and that this did not even involve evolution? You really think happens in the same way a zygote grows into an adult? Wow.”

          Do you really it happens by chance and selection? That explains a lot. Everything in biology is regulated and controlled. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of reproduction. And no, it is an analogy. The derepression of evolutionary information is different. It is information present in the 3 dimensional space of the interacting chromosomes, not in the linear sequences. It is in the spatial Network of the collective of sequences. How they interact and form a 3D Bauplan, order of events. Because it is hard o grasp for poeple who cannot see this Network, I made the analogy with the zygote. But as said, the code for the Bauplan is in the 3D network not in the individual sequences themselves. It is an emerging property.

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            1. Clear as mud, since 1. “Finely tuned” explains nothing, 2. Natural selection can produce the appearance of design, and 3. You still have not answered most of my questions. You wrote: “Natural selection is not a mechanism for adaptation.” Actually, the role of natural selection in adaptation is well confirmed by experiments and population biology studies. How else do variations get based on and thus allow organisms to deal with environmental changes? Please don’t give is a vague “Bauplan release” refrain again.

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              1. Glen, I know selection is presented as omnipotent Creator. Still, natural selection cannot even explain a single human accelerated region, such as the HAR1F. Try with the observed mutation rates and selection coefficient of 0.1. Try to explain the 18 mutations that form the Little RNA Zipper with real data. Because we have 2700 of such regions and more than 800 unique microRNA genes (which control thousands of genetic networks, Darwinian hypotheses are nothing but hotair. The real biological data mean that evolution cannot be anything but a frontloaded and process, regulated and controlled like all biology. This has been known since Mivart.

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                1. No Peer, natural selection is not presented as an “omnipotent creator.” There are lots of things natural selection can’t do (like make a cow that can jump over the moon), but by all evidence it can do a lot in helping organisms adapt to changing environments, and produce new species over time. How does your model can do that? You can’t just have random or spontaneous changes, and saying “bauplan release” does not begin to explain speciation or adaptation. Your statistical argument suffers from some of the same flaws as Behe’s irreducible complexity claims . For one, you seem to assume that a only one specific genetic combination can produce the function in question, whereas it’s possible that dozens or hundreds or more could. Over and over you talk about “front-loading” but never clarify when and how that took place, or how initial diversity, even if extensive, did not get devastated at the Flood. Will you please finally address that? Making inflammatory dismissals such as “Darwinian hypotheses are nothing but hot air” does not begin to answer that or otherwise help your case.

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          2. Peer, you wrote: “Evolution has nothing to do with alleles.” I’m sorry, but that makes as much sense as saying that “Paleontology has nothing to do with fossils.” Even in a YE view, since there are thousands more alleles in modern populations than the pair of each “kind” that would have left the Ark, obviously the formation and selection of new alleles are centrally involved in evolution.

            When I asked how you explain a pair of marsupials evolved into all the marsupial species we see today and the fossil record, you wrote “Do you really it happens by chance and selection? That explains a lot.” Yes, it does. I know you meant that as a slam, but the “it: that does explain a lot is natural selection. It astounds me that you don’t seem to accept it’s major role in evolution, which is supported by extensive empirical evidence.

            When I pointed out that your comparing a zygote developing into an adult to evolution made no sense, you replied that it was an analogy. I know. My point was that it was a lame and misleading analogy, since they are entirely different processes.

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            1. Peer, you wrote: “Evolution has nothing to do with alleles.” I’m sorry, but that makes as much sense as saying that “Paleontology has nothing to do with fossils.”

              I find it rather incredible that in the 21st information century, in which we show that different species are characterized by unique (non-allelic) DNA sequences, still think Evolution has to do with alleles. Evolution is an information proces. It is driven by novel DNA sequences, not by alleles. This is the state of current biology and evolutionary biology should stop pretending it is about alleles. The theistic evolutionists should blow the whistle and ask their Darwinian friend about the real differences between phyla, If they are honest, they will have to tell you that the difference between man ans chimp is >800 microRNA genes, over 1600 protein coding genes and over 2700 human accelerated regions. I have pointed out here in two instances on the gene level (Syncitin gene and Exon 3 of the ENAM gene) that Evolution is about a modulated process and reshuffling of preexisting genetic modules. Natural selection does not play a rol of any significance. The novel Information and information Systems, as well as the redundant functional elements in intergenic regions, demonstrate Darwinian processes to be completely irrelevant. Natural selection can only select what is there and directly required to increase offspring. That’s all it is. It can not select what is not there. So how ist it involved in the Evolution of >800 novel microRNA genes, 1600 protein coding genes and >2700 human accelerated regions. You did not know that is the real genetic difference of these organisms? Your allelic vision of evolution explains your belief in Darwinism.
              My analogy was not more than that: an analogy. Since I have the feeling that the biology Background here is rather weak (allelic visions of Evolution), I thought most people here may not understand how the 3D interactions of the chromosomes form the higher order Bauplan, so I used the 2D analogy. I explained that it should be understood as an emerging property of an interacting Network facilitated by repetitive sequences (TEs). I am sorry to hear you find it lame and misleaing. Can you explain, why?

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              1. Peer, as usual, you ramble on about nebulous “3D interactions” and bash “Darwinians” without answering my key questions. You claim that natural selection has no significant role in evolution, but haven’t answered how your model allows for adaptation without natural selection. You say evolution is about unique DNA sequences, not alleles, but alleles are made of DNA sequences (or specified by them), are they not? You ask why I say your analogy comparing evolution to zygotes developing into adults is lame and misleading, when I already explained why: because they are entirely different processes. Everyone here knows that, and you even admitted it in your first reply, so why are you belaboring it?

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  22. Last, as I asked before, since you suggest there are clear distinctions between dinosaurs and birds, please explain what exactly those differences are.

    Superfacially (looking at the fossils), there may not be a lot of differences. Still, the genetics of birds demonstrates millions of bird-specific genetic regulators for the Bauplan of feathers and flying. The few feathered dinosaurs of the fossil record may be reflecting the derepression of the Bauplan of birds. In a few steps the Bauplan is released, because it does not require novel information. Birds did not have to evolve over millions of years through an acquisition of germline viruses (as we are told by Darwinians), no, they may have evolved in a few steps through derepression of the preexisting bauplan. Derepression does not take a lot of time, we know, since a baby develps thousands of differentiated cells in a few months. Likewise, derepression of Bauplans does noet require millions of years.

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    1. Peer, You wrote: “In a few steps the Bauplan is released, because it does not require novel information.” Vague claims like this don’t cut it. Modern birds species contain thousands alleles that could not have been contained in the bottle-necked pairs that left the Ark. How did all those alleles get formed at all, let alone in “a few steps”? Even if they managed to get formed, how are they not new information? I’ve asked those questions before, and am still waiting for a straight answer. You talk about the “Bauplan” being released? How does the organism know what to “release” in order to let it adapt to it’s environment?
      You also still haven’t answered my question of what exactly distinguishes a bird from a dinosaur. You say there may not be a lot of “superficial” differences. If so, then list us even a few. List even one phenotypic trait unique to birds. That should be easy if birds have many unique genes, as you claim. Even if modern birds had genes distinct from Mesozoic dinosaurs (which you haven’t shown), it does not mean the intermediate forms between dinos and modern birds did not share common genes and common traits. You also seem to be contradicting yourself. After repeatedly suggesting that birds are distinct from dinosaurs, you now say that birds could have evolved quickly and in a few steps. Evolved from what, if not dinosaurs? Even more puzzling, you write: “The few feathered dinosaurs of the fossil record may be reflecting the derepression of the Bauplan of birds.” Let me get this straight. You not only dispute that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but suggest that some dinosaurs evolved from birds? Either way, how then can birds and dinos be separate bauplans, or separate creations, as you seemed to imply earlier?

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      1. Glen, The claims are not so vague, if you would understand the Bauplan as an emerging propery of the 3D spatial network of interacting chromosomes. The chromosomes consist of repetitive sequences, thousands and thousands per chromosome. (Junk DNA, remnants of viruses, according to the Darwinian, who have, as usual, cause and effect upsidedown, since viruses have their origin in these elements). These sequences, known as Lines and Sines, can form interactions with each other and with long-noncoding RNAs through Hoogsteen base-paring. In this way, all chromosomes in their uncondensed state, form an interactive 3D network which releases the Bauplan. By changing the 3D network you will change the Bauplan. The Bauplan is stabilized by TEs and can be destabilized through addition or deletion of novel TEs. This is exactlly what we see in phylogenetics. All major changes to the Bauplan, i.e. Evolution, fall together with bursts of TE activity.

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        1. Peer, as usual, you avoid directly answering most of my questions, offer only confusing, jargon ridden generalities such as “In this way, all chromosomes in their uncondensed state, form an interactive 3D network which releases the Bauplan.” Whatever this means, it does not begin to explain how and when such a “release” takes place, or how it results in adaptations during speciation. let alone the hyper-rapid speciation needed after the Flood.
          Let me ask the key questions once more. This time, if you can’t answer them in a clear and direct way, I see no point in continuing, as others have already decided (probably showing more wisdom than me):
          1. How was any “front-loading” of genetic diversity not destroyed after the Flood, when each kind was reduced to a single pair, with at most four alleles per gene?
          2. The cheetah case shows that even bottlnecks far less severe than that result in long-term devastation of diversity – the opposite of what you need.
          3. When many new alleles are created over time by natural selection (especially when point mutations are selected and passed on, as we know sometimes occurs), how is this not new information?
          4. Do you believe in a young (<10k year old) Earth and recent global flood? This is especially relevant to question #1.
          5. When I ask how adaptation occurs in your model, you keep saying that the “Bauplan is released” but that and your associated comments do not begin to explain how adaptation takes place, or when, how, and why this “release” of a bauplan takes place.
          6. What specific traits distinguish birds from dinosaurs?
          7. You talk about birds evolving in a few steps. Again, what did they evolve from, if not dinosaurs? In the a recent post you suggested the opposite–that some feathered dinosaurs arose from birds. Even if that were true, wouldn’t it only support the conclusion that birds are not distinct from dinosaurs?

          Please refer to these numbers when you answer. BTW, I understood the term “bauplan” (German for “body plan”) is used to describe the common body features of a major taxonomic group such as vertebrates, or felines. You seem to be using it in an unusual way – as a euphemism for Genesis kind or “baramin.” If you maintain they are the same, then evidently your believe in far fewer “kinds” than even people like Ham allow (who suggests they are similar to families). At what approx. level are your kinds? Based on your comments about birds, evidently it would be a class, or for marsupials, an infraclass. If so, and you believe in a recent Flood, you’d have to believe that thousands of new species, genera, families, and orders all arose within a few hundred years — by some radical means that you cannot even explain clearly (and by which you also have to ignore mountains of evidence for a long and complex Earth history). What other creationists support your model? I’d be surprised if many even understand it. So far, it’s incomprehensible to me.

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          1. Frontloaded evotheory (preformationisms) mainly was and is a European alternative to the untenable Darwinian hypothesis. If you really want to know something about it, read my papers. Also read the links I made earlier. If you read them, you will understand that preformationism is much longer around than Darwinism. I will now try to answer your questions.

            1) Because the systems to induce the Variation is preserved in the Genome. It is a variation inducing genetic system of transposon-like sequences. Ever heard of position effects? The are mediated by transposnlike sequence, and teh effects they have on the karyotype. It is modulated an sequence controlled. Like Suzanne Estes showed in science, about a decade ago, that the ability to induce variation in worms does not dwindle after they went through a bottle neck. It is beacuse variation is not in the alleles, but in the intragenic (allelelic if you wish) sequences. Further, mutations are a function of DNA sequence and predictable. If you give me 100 sequences of a gene with increased mutation rate (many alleles, as you call them), I will tell you where the mutations will be introduced in the same sequence in a environment with increased radioactive Background (read my papers on non-random mutations). Mutations are predictable if you have enough Information and that is what we have nowadays.
            2) they lost non-essential genes, and most likely they lost most of the redundant system to induce variation.
            3) alleles do not have to be created. They are mutated genes.Some mutate faster because of genetic and environmental cues (recently reported in the literature)
            4) not relevant for my theory. I am not a geologist so cannot say anything about it. But, it could be true. As a non-geologist I cannot reject, neither confirm it. Still, frontloaded evotheory (any biology based on information) cannot last for millions of years. The redundant part of the genome would disintegrate and become defunct.
            5) Adaptations presuppose Darwinian selection. The toolkit for the fits (adaptations as you call them, but I call them “fits”) is released by transposons (as a response to the environment?). Can the fit organism (Goldschmid called it “hopeful Monster”) reproduce? Than it will remain in that niche (untill it goes extinct). Check the fossil record for hopeful Monsters (fits), they are everywhere. What is not in the recford is gradual Darwinians transitions. Evolution to form “fits” can only be non-gradual.
            6) Birds and dinosaur? Depends what dinosaurs, they are polypheletic, as far as I know.
            7) Birds may have had their own baranome, which also contained the teeth-programs. Probably all feathered bird stem from this baranome. There is not really a dinosaur candidate for bird Evolution, as far as I know. If you have more question, do not hesitate to ask. Mine is a complete evotheory, which explains where Darwin abstains.

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        2. Peer, you wrote: “Frontloaded evotheory (preformationisms) mainly was and is a European alternative…”
          I don’t know what that means. Darwin and many early biologists, geologists and paleontologists were European, as are many modern workers.

          You wrote: “If you really want to know something about it, read my papers. Also read the links I made earlier. If you read them, you will understand that preformationism is much longer around than Darwinism.”
          So what? Flat-earthism and geocentrism have been around a lot longer than Darwinism too. I have not had time to study your papers thoroughly, but from the substantial parts I have read, they seem as confusing as your posts here. I’m glad you tried to address each of my numbered questions, but most of what you wrote again failed to directly answer them, and/or contradicts well established evidence. Despite what I said last time, I’ll reply once more, but this will probably be it, since we are getting nowhere fast.

          Q1. I asked how any initial diversity or “front-loading” was not destroyed at the Flood. Your response talked about on mutations being predictable and non-random. Besides being largely irrelevant to my question, that’s not even true for many mutations. Even if you consider some regulated genetic changes to be mutations, many other mutations are caused by radiation, toxins, viruses, etc. are not controlled or predictable.

          Q2 (about the cheetah bottleneck). Your reply about the “loss of non-essential genes” and the “redundant system” misses the point, which is that the bottleneck and long-term diversity loss suffered by cheetahs would have happened to all land animals after the Flood, but even more severely. You claim evolution happens rapidly and in only a few steps but the cheetah case shows that what actually happens in bottle-necked populations is essentially the opposite. So if you accept the Flood (more on that below), that alone sinks your model.

          Q3 asked how new alleles are not new information. Again you seemed to miss the point. You wrote: “Alleles do not have to be created. They are mutated genes.” Whereas alleles do not have to be “created” in a supernatural sense, many new ones do need to form during speciation, and it has to happen at breakneck speed in a YE Flood model. That’s why YECs like Jeanson struggle in vain to find ways to accomplish that. In any case, saying that alleles are “mutated genes” doesn’t begin to answer how new alleles and new genes are not new information, especially when formed by selection of random mutations, which we know can happen (e.g. bacterial resistance or utilization of man made chemicals, etc).

          Q4. was about whether you believe in a young earth and a recent global Flood. You wrote “not relevant for my theory” As already explained, it’s very relevant, since any “front-loaded” diversity would be largely destroyed after a global Flood. You wrote ” I am not a geologist so cannot say anything about it.” You don’t have to be a geologist to know that there is abundant evidence for a and old Earth and against a recent global Flood. As a biologist railing against “Darwinism,” I should think you’d want to learn enough geology and paleontology to know whether your theory is consistent with extensive evidence from other fields.

          You wrote: “Still, frontloaded evotheory (any biology based on information) cannot last for millions of years.” So you’re a YEC after all? In mainstream science, there is no “front-loading” involved. Genomes develop and change as organisms evolve over time. In contrast, YECs have little time to work with, and those who propose front-loaded diversity have trouble explaining how most of this diversity did not get destroyed during the Flood. So it’s very curious that you can’t say much about the Flood or age of the Earth, especially since you claim to have a comprehensive model of evolution.

          Q5. I asked how you can have adaptation without natural selection, and how and why your “bauplan” is released. You replied:” “Adaptations presuppose Darwinian selection.”
          First, adaptation by natural selection is not based on presuppositions, but empirical evidence. Second, since you reject “Darwinism” your statement above implies that you also reject adaptation, which is absurd. Clearly organisms need to adapt to changing environments.

          You wrote: “The toolkit for the fits (adaptations as you call them, but I call them “fits”) is released by transposons (as a response to the environment?).

          This means little without explaining the “toolkit” consists of, and exactly how and why is it “released.” Just saying “by transposons” doesn’t begin to do this, since transposons or “jumping genes” are can’t get passed or help organisms adapt to changing enviromnents unless they or otherc variations are acted upon by natural selection. Yet you claim natural selection is not much involved.

          You asked: “Can the fit organism (Goldschmid called it “hopeful Monster”) reproduce?
          What is your point? Even punctuated equilibrium postulates periods of uneven rates of change (depending on the status of the environment). Even the fastest changes are slow compared to what the YE model needs, and do not involve “hopeful monsters.” If somehow hopeful monsters did appear, then no, they probably would not reproduce. But in view of that, why do you state,: “Then it will remain in that niche (until it goes extinct).” How is a hopeful monster going to remain in a niche without reproducing?

          “Check the fossil record for hopeful Monsters (fits), they are everywhere. I thought you implied before that you didn’t know much geology? No, hopeful monsters are not “everywhere.” In fact, I would not call any fossils “hopeful monsters.” First, there is evidence of many taxa changing and diversifying in relatively small steps over time (e.g. various cephalopod taxa). Second, since fossils are imperfect snapshots of life, just because you don’t find a continuous series of intermediate forms between certain taxa does not make them “hopeful monsters.”

          “What is not in the record is gradual Darwinians transitions. Evolution to form “fits” can only be non-gradual.” You have not presented any compelling evidence to demonstrate this, or refute the extensive evidence to the contrary. Indeed, since environments often change gradually, so your proposed sudden and dramatic changes would often not work, even if you had a viable mechanism to explain what causes them, and how they help organisms adapt to changing environments, which as far as I can see, you don’t.

          Q6 & Q7 were about what separates birds and dinosaurs, and whether birds evolved from dinosaurs. You wrote: “Depends what dinosaurs, they are polypheletic, as far as I know.”
          So you are acknowledging that some dinosaurs may have evolved into birds? If so, that’s consistent with mainstream science, but appears to contradict your earlier suggestions that they were distinct creations with unique sets of genes.

          You wrote: “Birds may have had their own baranome, which also contained the teeth-programs. All birds were the same “baranome…” Probably all feathered bird stem from this baranome. There is not really a dinosaur candidate for bird Evolution, as far as I know.”
          This is another reason I’d encourage you to learn more geology and paleontoloy. While no single dinosaur species has been identified as the ancestor of birds (and it’s not reasonable to expect such a precise ID, based on the imperfect nature of the fossil record), there is compelling evidence that early birds arose from maniraptoran theropods, and that modern forms evolved from the paraves clad of maniraptorans. So unless you have convincing counter evidence, you’d have to conclude that dinosaurs and birds belong to the same “baranome” (what many YECs would call a baramin or Genesis kind), even most argue tooth and nail against the idea.

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          1. “Even the fastest changes are slow compared to what the YE model needs, and do not involve “hopeful monsters.” If somehow hopeful monsters did appear, then no, they probably would not reproduce.”

            How do you know that? Chromothripsis produces a complete reshuffled Genome in a single genetic Event. I know this because I am involved in cancer Research. In my opinion chromothripsis is a remnant of the saltantional evolutionary process.

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            1. Peer: When I wrote: “Even the fastest changes are slow compared to what the YE model needs, and do not involve “hopeful monsters.” If somehow hopeful monsters did appear, then no, they probably would not reproduce.” you replied:
              “How do you know that? Chromothripsis produces a complete reshuffled Genome in a single genetic Event. I know this because I am involved in cancer Research. In my opinion chromothripsis is a remnant of the saltantional evolutionary process.”

              How do I know what? — that even the fastest changes are too slow for the YE timetable, or that hopeful monsters would probably not reproduce? The former is supported by the well documented, major patterns of fossil succession and the time spans they involve. Pick up any good book on paleontology for the details. Your Chromothripsis analogy seems like another moot and misleading analogy. First, you say that it produces a complete reshuffled Genome, but from what I read it more commonly involves extensive rearrangements in one or a few chromosomes, not an entire genome. Either way, it has no relevance to evolution or hopeful monsters. Indeed, if Chromothripsis did sometimes reshuffle an entire genome, it would only further undermine your argument. That’s because, while it makes sense that massive chromosomal disruptions could produce cancers, it makes no sense that they would produce a viable “hopeful monster”, or speed up evolution in any way. Do you have a shred of evidence or any references indicating that they can?

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          2. “Again you seemed to miss the point. You wrote: “Alleles do not have to be created. They are mutated genes.” Whereas alleles do not have to be “created” in a supernatural sense, many new ones do need to form during speciation, and it has to happen at breakneck speed in a YE Flood model.”

            You still do not understand that novel genes is not the sâme as new alleles. Once again: In humans we find >800 novel miRNA genes. This is novel information unrelated to other genes. In Humans we also find are >4000 alleles for HLA-B gene, a gene involved in the immune recognition and all related to HLA-B. The Phyla are determined and characterized by novel Genes, not by novel alleles. Your ideas about genetics and evolution are completely wrong. Interestingly, the variation in the >4000 HLA-B alleles arose via a genetic mechanism, which induces mutations specifically in these genes. Many immune system genes are subject to mutation-generating mechaninism, since a lot of variation is required, there. Similar mechanism operate outside the immune system, however, and may explain intraspecies sequence similarities.

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            1. I’m copying this from another post but is relevant here:
              Peer, I’ve been too busy to follow the comments section carefully. I apologize for not being able to spend the time especially given your effort to explain your ideas. But, I am struck by one thing looking now through some of your comments. You keep saying that NS is not important. I’m not sure why you are so against God using such a mechanism when you want to simply put another mechanism in its place. What is to be gained really from “frontloading and drifting” that natural selection could also not play a part or a major role? Really, your proposal read to me as deism and leave God less of a participant in creating in the present than does the OEC or EC advocate. What I mean by that frontloading and drifting feels like God simply providing all the instructions at the beginning and then either species are generated as a result of playing out a preprogrammed set of instructions or the basic framework for how to adapt was frontloaded and now organisms are randomly changing over time (genetic drift).

              Let’s put this to an example. Would you say that the original canine (or whatever your inclusive kind group is) was created with the specific instructions for making the exact features of my dog Lassie? Or is my dog Lassie simply one of billions of possible products of the original kind but my exact dog was not planned specifically? Put another way; Did God create the original kinds foreknowing (predestining) every single individual that would live and their characteristics or did he create the kinds with the ability to change but not knowing exactly what changes would occur though they were given their limits (kind parameters you could say)? It’s a predestination vs open theism question. Another nuance on the predestination angle would be: Did God create the original canine and then 1) step back and watch his plan unfold with all the information for how it would unfold all contained in the original animal or 2) guide/ be involved in some way with, every stop of the process along the way to create each individual organism that has lived. Your mechanism sounds more akin to an open theism approach. A creator supernatural frontloaded variation and mechanism for adaptation but then once created individuals drifted and, without natural selection apparently, filled various niches but the exact forms that filled those niches are not necessarily exactly programmed but chanced into their present circumstances.

              It’s a question of God’s sovereignty over creation and I’m not sure how drift fits into a sovereign plan. Now, it could be you only use drift in the sense that we describe drift as random because we can’t see the control behind it but God doesn’t play with dice. If that is the case then why no us natural selection as a tool? I think it stems from the fact you are committed to God not being able to create anything new after the 6 days of creation. You want God to be a passive participant in the unfolding of creation rather than an active participant. If he is active and his tools are natural selection and mutation then it would be difficult to deny that new characteristics can’t be formed over time.
              At the end of the day, you seem to be trying to find a “natural” mechanism to fill a void that doesn’t really exist. You need species to form more quickly to possibly fit into a short chronology of the Earth and to maintain a particular reading of scripture. Natural selection doesn’t fit that bill and you would be right, it doesn’t have the power to effect that kind of change that rapidly and it requires mutations as a source of variation (as an aside, I don’t understand why you can’t incorporate NS into your VIGES and have the VIGES be the source of variation that NS acts upon). So its frontloading because you can’t have “random” mutations be the source of variation though paradoxically you are willing to use random genetic drift to create divergences of species.

              Lastly, I get the strong impression you haven’t collected population data over many generations and calculated selection coefficients nor have you used real-world wild population data to measure rates of genetic drift of alleles. Genetic drift does not how the power you are ascribing to it under most real world conditions and natural selection though loci have lower selection coefficients than most people realize is very powerful over time.

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          3. “there is compelling evidence that early birds arose from maniraptoran theropods, and that modern forms evolved from the paraves clad of maniraptorans.”

            What is the compelling evidence? Can you explain it and add some references?

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            1. “it’s not reasonable to expect such a precise ID, based on the imperfect nature of the fossil record”

              The Imperfect nature is simply a reflection of the saltational character of the underlying genetics.

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              1. Peer, when I wrote: “it’s not reasonable to expect such a precise ID, based on the imperfect nature of the fossil record” you replied: “The Imperfect nature is simply a reflection of the saltational character of the underlying genetics.” This further underscores why you need to do more reading on geology and paleontology. There are many reasons why the fossil record is necessarily imperfect, due to the nature of taphonomy and fossilization (making it unlikely that most organisms will get fossilized). Moreover, as mentioned before, there are many examples of evolutionary progressions involving many relatively minor steps and branching patterns (with more being filled in all the time), and no evidence that where the record is less complete that they are “hopeful monsters.”
                In support of the above, I mentioned cephalopod groups before, but perhaps an example closer to home would be human evolution. There are dozens of hominids showing intermediate features between modern humans and earlier primates. Moreover, the farther you go back in time (that is, the lower you go stratigraphically), the less like modern humans the most human like ones appear. This is exactly what we would expect in conventional views about evolution, but flies in the face of your model and “hopeful monsters” view. Indeed, if humans were created by supernatural fiat and “front-loaded”, as you evidently believe, why don’t we find modern humans throughout the fossil record, or at least alongside early hominids 3 or 4 million years ago, rather than only the highest strata? In this case it does not work to cite the imperfections of the fossil record, since we have literally zillions of Paleozoic and Mesozoic fossils without any trace of any human or hominid remains, and when hominds start appearing in the Tertiary, they do not occur in willy-nilly patterns as your “hopeful monster” claims would predict, but in the patterns outlined above. You can’t have a comprehensive model of evolution without taking all this and lots of other paleontological and geologic evidence into account. .

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              2. Peer, I will grant you that fact that you are not beholden to other YEC or other positions views of speciation. I assume you have read Kurt Wise because you sound very much like his SDSID (Step-Down Saltational Intrabaraminic Diversification) view. Would you go as far as saying that whales may have had walking ancestors? It appears you can accommodate much more radical genetic change than other YEC models.

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                1. Natural Historian write to Peer: “Would you go as far as saying that whales may have had walking ancestors? It appears you can accommodate much more radical genetic change than other YEC models.”
                  I know what you mean, but instead of the saying “can accommodate” I’d use the term “propose”, since Peer suggests that major evolutionary changes happen very quickly and in only a “few steps” but as far as I can see, has no viable mechanism for that. I still have little idea what he believes drives or triggers such radical changes, since he seems to deny the role of NS and adaptation, and
                  makes vague claims about front-loading and Bauplans being “released.” You seem to have gathered that genetic drift may be a major part of his model, but I got the impression that it mainly involves some sort of pre-programmed triggers in the front-loaded genomes that cause organisms to suddenly change and become “fit” to their environments. However, besides clarifying exactly what those triggers are or how they work, he has not explained how any initial front-loaded diversity would survive a global flood, despite me asking several times about that. I also agree with you that he seems to have no valid reason for rejecting NS, other than needing a faster mechanism to accomodate a YE timetable, even though he suggests he is agnostic on the age of Earth. However, I don’t want to restart a dialog with him, since it’s been more confusing and frustrating than productive. Maybe you’ll have better luck making heads or tails of it all than I did.

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            2. Peer, when I wrote: “there is compelling evidence that early birds arose from maniraptoran theropods, and that modern forms evolved from the paraves clad of maniraptorans.” you replied: What is the compelling evidence? Can you explain it and add some references?

              Good grief, this is like asking for references that most paleontologists believe trilobites are arthropods. While there are a few hold-outs still suggesting alternate archosaurian origins of birds, the vast majority accept the theropodian, and more specifically maniraptoran origin of birds, based on extensive anatomic and fossil evidence (including the many feathered dinos coming out of China and other locales in recent years), Moreover, an early bird like Archaeopteryx shows over two dozen features in common with theropod dinosaurs, which it why it (and indeed all other ancient and modern birds) are now classified as theropods. Many other lines of evidence for this are covered in scores of easily found papers and books on bird evolution. For a good summary of this evidence (and from your admitted lack of geologic knowledge, this is probably the place to start), try the Wikipedia entry on bird evolution, which contains many relevant references:
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_birds

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  23. Peer: You wrote: “Birds did not have to evolve over millions of years through an acquisition of germline viruses (as we are told by Darwinians).” Since viruses can disrupt an organisms DNA and thus may have a role in evolution (as one among many mutation sources), who are the Darwinians that supposedly argue that “acquisition of germline viruses” played the major role in bird evolution? Any references?

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    1. The Genome of all organism are littered with sequences that Darwinian explain as accumulated invasions of Viruses. This, of course, demonstartes the non-sense and complete failure of the Darwinian to really explain the genomes. The genomes do not contain remnants of viruses. It is the opther way around. The Genome contains a genetic System to induce variation, adaptatations (fits) and speciation. These elemenst are known as ERVs, SINEs, LINEs, transposons, etc. But, here too, the Darwinians are dead wrong. RNA viruses emerge from ERVs in a single step. Read this or go to figure 3 immediately, and you will know I am right: https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j23_1/j23_1_99-106.pdf

      Let’s end the Darwinian era. More Darwinian nonsense is too much.

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    2. In retrospect, my comments about viruses and bird evolution might have been confusing. What I meant to say was that even tho viruses are sometimes involved in genetic changes and additions, I take issue with Peer’s suggestion that most paleontologists believe that viruses were the main cause of bird evolution, and would be interested in any references he has to support that.

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      1. Glen, you are all confused by the Darwinian Interpretation of the Genome. Also the genome of birds is full of sequences that are interpreted as remnants of ancient viral invasions. Still, these genomes are not made of remnants of viruses. The Genome contains sequences, known as Lines, Sines, ERVs, transposons, etc, which are interpreted as the remnants of virus invasions of the past. This is non-sence and non-science. The sequences, which I have studied in Detail (papers are submitted) are regulatory sequences to (de)condense the Chromatin. And as I have argued/showed they are the sequences from which viruses originate in one or a few steps. If you don’t see that, it does not make sense to continue this discussion. If you see it, like I do, the Darwinian era is over. That, I think, is your problem and that is why you are repeating the questions, which I already addressed. Evolution can only be modulated and non-gradual. Have a nice day.

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  24. Peer, you wrote: “And as I have argued/showed they are the sequences from which viruses originate in one or a few steps. If you don’t see that, it does not make sense to continue this discussion. If you see it, like I do, the Darwinian era is over. That, I think, is your problem and that is why you are repeating the questions, which I already addressed. Evolution can only be modulated and non-gradual. Have a nice day.”

    I only repeated questions because you often failed to answer them or gave answers that were confusing at best . Your reply here is a good example. You say that you “argued/showed” that viruses originate in a few stems. “Argued” yes, “showed”, no. You’re right, I don’t see how your claims about that or many other things are consistent with the bulk of scientific evidence. But since we seem to agree that neither of us is having much impact on the other, and since I’m not sure many people are following or interested in our long exchanges, let’s end it here. Best wishes.

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  25. Ken Ham isn’t wrong. You are assuming that everything evolved, yet Ken Ham is saying that nothing evolved. It always existed through the information in genes.

    It is a scientific fact that genetic information had to always exist in order for it to be expressed, meaning that some birds had teeth (had the AA gene), others did not (aa gene), and others carried the ressesive gene while having teeth (Aa).

    Have there been bird fossils found without teeth? If not, has there been research into why this is the case? Also, is there any way to study the genetic history of teeth in birds?

    I am pretty sure there is, in regard to my last question, and I hope these scientists, who have such great faith in themselves instead of God, our creator, are willing to conduct proper research into actually finding out the truth, even if it results in them being absolutely wrong about every assumption they’ve made in their scientific careers and probably their entire lives, unfortunately.

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    1. Hi, I’d had to disagree about Ken Ham not being wrong. At the very least we know that Ken Ham certainty is factually wrong about that penguins “still have teeth.” He mistook bits of gum that look like teeth in penguine for enamel teeth of ancient birds. Nothing to do with evolution in pointing out that error.

      Regarding genetic information we know quite a bit. I have post about those teeth genes (it’s not just one gene for teeth, teeth are a polygenetic trait requiring the action of many genes working together) https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2018/02/02/a-flock-of-genomes-reveals-the-toothy-ancestry-of-birds-2/

      Even if you were right that birds may have had a tooth gene allele originally that was lost you should consider the implications of what you are suggesting. YECs say that God created 289 (according to Ken Ham) different bird “kinds.” Each of these were created separately from each other but the genomes of all of these kinds have pieces of genes that make teeth. Except that NO living species of birds makes real teeth. You seem to be suggesting that God made hundreds of separate kinds of birds each of which originally made truth teeth. Then every single lineage of birds lost the ability to make teeth. Why? Sure it could happen to some but why would every single lineage independently lose the ability to make teeth that their ancestors had. After all, having a beak without teeth seems to work fine for all of them today. Why didn’t God create some birds with no teeth right from the start and not even give them teeth making genes?

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