An eleven-foot snake slithers among a cache of eggs and a sauropod dinosaur hatchling. Before it can grab the hatchling a landslide or windstorm buries the eggs, hatchling and snake. This is the scene preserved in Late Cretaceous deposits in India (Wilson et al. 2010). These same rocks have yielded thousands of sauropod eggs, hatchlings, bones and coprolites in what was a large sauropod nesting ground (Jain, 1989; Sahni et al, 1989). Wilson and his colleagues describe a particularly well preserved snake as a new fossil species and they also note that remains of other individuals of the same species of snake are found associated with other eggs in the same area.
This is observational evidence that ancient snakes hunted sauropod hatchlings. This nest site and other preserved sauropod nests in other locations reveal that sauropods typically left six to twelve eggs on the ground covered by a small bit of vegetation or loose sediment and the eggs were left to incubate themselves much like most reptiles today. In this case the eggs were likely too large and hard for this primitive snake to swallow because it did not have the capacity to open its jaws as wide a modern snakes. But given the size of the snake, even with its narrow gape, it could have taken in very young hatchlings. Fortunately, sauropods are thought to have had very fast growth rates, much like birds, such that they could escape any chance of snake predation if they could survive their first few weeks outside of the egg.
Yet Another Challenge to Young Earth Creationist’ Flood Geology Models
This fossil illustrates and supports an observation I have made previously about preserved dinosaur nests: Fossil Wasp Cocoons in Dinosaur Eggs: Complex Ecology Contradicts YEC Flood Geology Hypothesis, Juvenile Dinosaur Fossils in a Nest: Testimony to Rapid Burial but not by a Flood and Fossil Eggs, Nests, Floods and Stressed Pregnant Dinosaurs. In the latter two posts, I noted that dinosaur nests from Mongolia were found in layers of rock sitting on top of 20,000 feet of layers fossil-bearing rock. To explain how this could happen young earth creationists have had to result to some very creative story telling. They must explain how dinosaurs could have been roaming the Earth’s surface after 20,000 feet of sediments below their feet had deposited in global flood just a few days or weeks earlier. They claim (see prior posts for references) that pregnant dinosaurs which had been treading water and running up mountains to escape the global calamity wandered, during some lull in the chaotic global catastrophe, onto layers or newly deposited sediments. This time was so stressful for these dinosaurs that they sought out any place they could lay their eggs. Given the number of fossilized eggs in found in supposed Flood deposits, there must have been hundreds of thousands of these stressed pregnant dinosaurs that escaped the initial onslaught of the global deluge and were running around desperately making nests and laying eggs during this time.
Soon after laying these eggs, their nest and eggs, were covered by the continuing global events that eventually killed all the dinosaurs, except those preserved on the ark, and covered over the nests with fresh sediments allowing them to be preserved and eventually discovered by us today.
As implausible as this scenario painted by YECs might sound, their hypothesis is rendered utterly implausible when the physical evidence from dinosaur nests, such as the those above, are considered. Young earth creationists paint a picture of half-crazed dinosaurs running around to escape the next giant wave washing new layers of sediments over the world and laying nests in barren sand layers and then running off to try to find higher ground. What we find in this nest contradicts everything about this explanation.
Here we find clutches of preserved eggs, a hatchling dinosaur and a snake. How did the snake get there? How could dinosaurs have laid eggs during a global flood much less had the eggs survived long enough to incubate to hatching? Furthermore, there are thousands of eggs preserved in this area and there of several snakes of the same species preserved among them in addition to the one detailed in this particular study. Maybe a YEC could suggest that a long dinosaur survived weeks of flooding and laid its eggs and there was a snake that survived on a vegetation mat that happened to be there at the same time. But are we to believe that hundreds of the same species of dinosaur all laying eggs in the same area and multiple individuals of the same species of snake all ended up in that same location?
How could these snakes survive weeks if not months of a global Flood that killed every animal except those on the ark to then find itself in this nest? One would not expect the preservation of complex ecological relationships to be maintained in the middle of a disaster and yet we see evidence of that in this preserved nest.
There are far more reasonable explanations for the preservation of dinosaurs nests with eggs that don’t include a global flood. YECs often promote their view as being the best explanation for the geological features of the Earth and the fossil record. However, over and over again, a close inspection of the evidence shows that the YEC hypothesis is nothing more than an artificial construct with no explanatory power. It exists solely to maintain a specific, apparently infallible, interpretation by Ken Ham and others of the Bible.
———————————
Jain, S. L. “Recent dinosaur discoveries in India, including eggshells, nests and coprolites.” Dinosaur Tracks and Traces. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1989): 99-108.
Sahni, A. “Upper Cretaceous dinosaur eggs and nesting sites from the Deccan volcano-sedimentary province of peninsular India.” Dinosaur eggs and babies (1994): 204-226.
Wilson, Jeffrey A., Dhananjay M. Mohabey, Shanan E. Peters, and Jason J. Head. “Predation upon hatchling dinosaurs by a new snake from the Late Cretaceous of India.” PLoS biology8, no. 3 (2010): e1000322.
Cover image: Sculpture by Tyler Keillor and original photography by Ximena Erickson; image modified by Bonnie Miljour – Benton MJ (2010) Studying Function and Behavior in the Fossil Record. PLoS Biol 8(3): e1000321. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000321.g001, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9624022
Naturalis Historia 
Making matters even worse for YECs is that these are late Cretaceous beds supposedly representing mid to late Flood deposits so these dins and snakes had to survive months of a violent global flood. Plus there are hundreds of nesting sites all over the world besides tens of thousand of tracksites. No YEC explanation for all of this makes any sense whatsoever.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly. The sheer magnitude of the problem is hard for many people to grasp. Most people think that dino tracks are some extremely rare thing when they really aren’t. Most YEC explanations try to explain a single print or egg. As implausible as their explanation might be it makes even less sense when applied as a general explanation for other prints or eggs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“long dinosaur”, ?”lone dinosaur”
An interesting article. In a sense, it adds nothing new to the argument, since virtually every detail of the miles-thick sedimentary record demonstrates the absurdity of the year-long catastrophe deposition model. But there is indeed something particularly convincing about the biographical drama of egg laying, fledging, and predation, and of the time that we know to be required for such events from our own common experience
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the correction, I’ve made the change. Yes, just another of thousands of similar problems. Just beating the drum over and over again which at times seems unnecessary but you never now what “common experience” example might click in someones mind differently than another. In this case I wouldn’t have spent the time except that I had written about cocoons in dinosaur eggs and I could just copy that post and replace with information about the snake.
LikeLike
Another nifty item to add into the new Rocks Were There book’s chapter on the problems of Flood Geology. Flood Geology does snag on those pesky details, doesn’t it.
LikeLike
I hadn’t thought before of snakes predating dinosaur nests, but of course there’s no reason why they wouldn’t, if around at the same time, and if big enough to tackle an egg or hatchling of that size Snakes on the Galapagos predate on young marine iguana hatchlings making a dash for the sea. And in Britain grass snakes and adders predate on the nests of songbirds, modern descendants of dinosaurs.
LikeLike
Just a minor technical niggle. Your blog page always refuses to let me like other people’s comments until I have not only logged intoWordPress but have made a comment of my own. A curious requirement.
LikeLike
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll check the settings and see if there is anything I can do about that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
First. Birds also put thier eggs in the ground to keep them warm.most dinosaurs, or all, were not reptiles as i see it.
anyways these collections of fossils makes the creationist case.
the ability to fossilize such a concentration could only be a unique event. it doesn’t happen today. the sand covering/avalanche is not been proven as even a option. instead what covered them was a great amount of sediment that squeezed out all moisture. instant stone.
Then simply they were moved en mass by great pressurized waterflow. they were simply stacked on each other.
The clue in all this is HOW they got fossilized. In other words yEC teaches they were turned to stione instantly or soon. i say instantly and then all one was moving was sa layer of sediment/rock.
The hard facts fiorst. then imagination about the details.
LikeLike
In my email is a comment from Robert Byers, replying to the article with more on his contention that dinosaurs were not reptiles and so on, but when I click on “reply” there,or come to the site by another link, there is no such comment visible.
Did Robert remove his comment, or did you do so? Or has Robert found a way of blocking some readers from seeing his posts?
LikeLike
“Instant stone” … wish fulfillment getting ahead of your pseudogeology again, Robert? There’s no need even to ask for your source documentation for the idea that rocks can form sufficiently fast to do what you need it to here for your Big Slosh version of the past. Nobody in the YEC subculture has ever pulled that off (not Snelling nor Austin nor Oard) so there’s nobody for you to even crib on this one.
LikeLike
YEC would say all sedimentary rock below the k-t line was sediment from the flood year , deposyed in layers and turned to stone. Everybody must turn sediment/biology within , into stone. YEC jst quickens the recipe. I add it was so quick that by the time the great swarths of layers were moved about they already were stone. then a bit more pressure to put in strata. so the creatures/biology were not alive but already fossilized when placed on layers below them. Two events.
LikeLike
Yes, Robert, many birds, ones that can fly as well as flightless ones, make nests on the ground and lay their eggs there. And a lot of them nest in vast colonies too, both because there’s limited suitable space and because they gain a measure of protection from certain nest predators if there are numerous adults around to drive the predators away collectively. So it’s not surprising if theropod dinosaurs behaved the same way back in the past, in similar circumstances. (I wonder if this nest site, when it was active, looked rather like a modern flamingo nesting colony, though whether the dinosaur parents did return and feed their youngsters, or the young were independent from hatching, I don’t know. Maybe the scientists who have excavated the sites have found some clues. )And of course we are agreed that modern birds and those dinosaurs are closely related, even though you seem to have an objection to saying that modern birds are descended from one branch of the dinosaurs, and instead want to call these creatures birds even though they had no wings, and were different in many other ways from any modern bird. But if you don’t want to label them reptiles, that’s fine. Just don’t use the word. Reptiles aren’t a proper clade anyway. All modern mammals, including humans, are descended from reptilian ancestors, as well as the birds, and the creatures like crocodiles and turtles and snakes and lizards that in popular parlance are categorised as reptiles nowadays. And the whole lot of us are descended from fishy ancestors. That’s evolution for you. Things change.
And yes, some modern birds, as well as turtles and crocodilians, actually bury their eggs and let them be incubated that way. Which says nothing about how we should classify them. After all, dragonflies, fish and frogs all lay their eggs in water. I don’t think anyone would suppose that this means they are closely related species.
LikeLiked by 1 person
it was a minor point of mine. it was suggesting that only dinos kept their eggs heated this way. tHus suggesting dinos, like these, were not birds. I am confident these theropod dinos are just dumb boring birds. In a spectrum of diversity. there were no dinosaurs or reptiles. these were wrong classifications .
it caused confusion and was a tool for evolutionism in its march of error.
by the way birds easily have atrophied wings. And they would say some theropod dinos had wings or rather arms that allowed them to start the evolution to flight.
The wing is really just a arm used for flight.
I am confident its very little traits that would separate a theropod dino from modern/extinct flightless ground birds
LikeLike
“It was suggesting that only dinos kept their eggs heated this way”
No, Robert. The article was suggesting no such thing. It described what the incubation method appeared to be, judging by the remains excavated in this site and other sauropod nesting sites, and said this was much like the method used by some reptiles nowadays. There was no implication that “only dinos” did this. Quite the contrary, since it said that some modern reptiles (modern and therefore not dinosaurs) did this. The article might have added that a few modern birds do this too, and this could have been relevant had the point been to stress that birds are descended from a branch of dinosaurs, but in this case it wasn’t relevant. The point was to describe what the site looked like, and what it showed about the nesting habits of these sauropods, and the snakes that preyed on their nestlings, and the evidence that this was a whole colony of creatures going about their normal reproductive and predatory business, being suddenly destroyed by a catastrophic event.
“There were no dinosaurs or reptiles”
So your contention is that the stegosaurus and other vast solidly quadruped grazing dinosaurs were all birds, then? Exactly which features of their anatomy lead you to this conclusion, may I ask? Please make clear in your answer what, in your opinion, are the distinctive identifying features of birds. Or would you classify them as mammals? If so, please tell us what the identifying features of a mammal are, and which of these features a stegosaurus possessed.( with appropriate reference to the specific fossil finds that indicate this)
As for reptiles, are you now suggesting that such creatures as snakes, crocodiles and tortoises did not exist in the past at the same time as these sauropods (odd, since snake fossils were found in association with the nests).? Or do you mean that snakes, for example, did exist then but that you object to calling snakes, or anything else, reptiles? Is there some other term you think is more appropriate to group together scaled hairless vertebrates which cannot regulate their temperatures internally but have to do so by moving in and out of the sun, water etc.?
LikeLiked by 1 person
There was no dinosaur group. There is no reptile group. these are fables of classification made up centuries ago.
So instead thewre are birds. Those called theropod dinos etc etc are just birds. The sauropods are just OTHER varietys of kinds of creatures. another issue. likewise crocs and turtles and snakes have no relationship to each other. They just have some like traits. its just a coincedence in a biology spectrum of limited options. Just like some lay eggs and some have live birth. Its irrelevant however to classify them by whether they lay eggs or not. it was a error from the old ones.
We talkede about this on other threads.
LikeLike
Robert has blundered oh so close to the correct answer: all life on earth is related, by natural common descent. In that sense everything is one big group, or as the baraminologists might put it, all life constitutes one giant monobaramin.
LikeLike
rj, my man. While commenting on supposed blunder, you blunder. Or shall I say you make a number of assumptions. Suppose I respond and say that all life is designed, by a designer. Would you buy that? Probably not. It certainly could go far towards explaining, if one believes it, why life seems so interrelated. I know, it also “seems” so religious. And we know that “real science” has no faith involved.(picture me laughing hysterically, fading off in the distance).
LikeLike
On the blundering department, Chuck, perhaps you’d care to weigh in on what possessed the designer (if such there be) littering hundreds of millions of years of fossils (and I know you don’t like that Map of Tim reality into your head either) with almost this and nearly that transitions (including ones explicitly predicted on evolutionary grounds and never even slightly anticipated by any creationist, like the probainognathids no creationist has been able to account for in the therapsid lineage). We’ve yet to learn much about what (if any) actual creationists you’ve relied on, but as a block the data avoidance of antievolutionists (which I measure directly at the source level across their entire spectrum) suggests that if all you’ve relied on for data is their apologetics, you’re going to be missing most of the data field to be accounted for, since they ignore it for you.
Describe for us, in a particular taxon case, Chuck, how exactly a designer version of life would look different from a naturally evolve one. (And do APPLY your alleged YEC model and put dates, actual ones in your own model, to said taxa, & by what means you determined that.) And if so, don’t you have to actually offer evidence for that? But if there is no difference, then of what utility is this designer hypothesis at all? Wouldn’t it then be but an superfluous layer intended to make you feel better about things?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Robert, while i can buy into some of your statements, I think you are making a mistake here. Even YEC’s will admit that dinosaurs were, well, dinosaurs. I am not sure where you are getting this point of view. Do you have a reference?
LikeLike
Good on you, Chuck! It had seemed that there was no statement of Robert’s so outrageous that you would not either let it pass unchallenged or even applaud it, but here you are expressing doubt and asking for a reference. Maybe you’ll have better luck than the rest of us in getting one. Robert has not hitherto acknowledged any obligation to back up his claims that a person or group has said or found or done something with any evidence that this is in fact the case. Why would he, indeed, when he does not acknowledge any need to base his “scientific” claims either on any published work by some qualified professional scientist or on any actual physical evidence, fossil, geological, anatomical or genetic, and happily disregards as irrelevant, outmoded or fabrication not only all the work of biologists of the past or present, but also everything that material science has hitherto discovered about chemistry, physical geography, earth movements etc?
BTW, I haven’t forgotten that you have addressed some posts to me elsewhere in the comments threads. I’ve just been busy with different matters offline, and spent what time I had here responding to other posts. But I hope to get to yours pretty soon.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We” see how far that Source Methods path goes for either of them, Sally. Keep popcorn at the ready to watch in case either of them can come clean.
LikeLike
Let me get this straight, rj, as i respond to your nth inane post. YOU have no sources? And if you do, who get’s to decide which ones are best? oh i see, YOU do. How convenient. Do you always rig the debate so you feel assured you will win? How weak.
LikeLike
Thank you for your post. I am certainly no enemy of science, and like you i expect facts when debating facts. I certainly understand being busy, as i am myself. please feel free to “get to me” when it is practical. You surely have a right to prioritize your posts. Be well.
LikeLike
Robert has a long track record of more or less making up his own version of creationism. Perhaps you are more restricted in only copying secondarily arguments that you deem to be the more official creationist stance (even though there is muddle all around as ICR & AiG & Kent Hovind etc flip back & forth on all manner of subjects over the years). So far I haven’t seen much sign of which of the many unreliable creationist troughs you have slurped from (& how dated they may be), let alone your method of not fact checking them, But by all means dive in with some of your authority figures, Chuck, that may better measure this aspect of your commentary methods.
LikeLike
Sorry rj, you’re the one who believes you came from poop and goop, so feel free to drink your own algae. What a dork. This is how you debate? And gosh, i bet you thought you win debates because you’re so knowledgeble and witty? How arrogantly deluded. Truly an example of self-worship. My my, rj, heavy weights the crown, eh?
LikeLike
Chuck, so far you’ve been long on rhetoric & short on specifics. The last billion years or so of our evolutionary lineage at no point involves “poop” or “goop,” but I can see how in the creationist cartoon version that might appear so. You’ve yet to offer examples with sources of alleged dating problems (& then we could see how or whether you fact checked them), but on the lineage end of things, how about accounting for the data (fossil & biological) relating to the therapsids. Apply your creationists notions to actual data, give it a whack.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey rj, why don’t you write an entire book, or spend most of your free time throwing challenges back and forth. Seriously? And could you ever put your diatribes into one post. Every day i come here and need to respond three or four times to you, a couple to sally, one or two to paul. etc. I really do have better things to do. Tell you what. I will begin to answer your questions when you answer mine. Does that seem fair. Great. Knew you would agree. And i think you might be able to grasp this rj, that if you are going to employ the genetic fallacy to every single argument you make, then congratulations. You have guaranteed that no one can make a counter argument against you. See now why i don’t waste my time?
LikeLike
Too late on your snarky admonition, Chuck, for I have written a book, “Evolution Slam Dunk: Why the Reptile-Mammal Transition Proves Macroevolution, and How Antievolutionists Ignore It” (available at Amazon & all ebook formats) about which Christine Janis’ Amazon review recommended as “an incredible tour de force.” Currently I’m coauthoring another book (The Rocks Were There: Straight Science Answers to some bent Creationist questions), putting Source Methods to the topic of the “science” claims being made in the various AiG Answers books.
Meanwhile the data field exists, and you seem reluctant to explain any of it. You could start with those therapsids (especially the probainognathids, directly and successfully predicted by applying evolutionary principles, as I took note of in ESD). Or whether you think any/many/all/none of the ALUs in our genome differ in their “information” and how come we have so many of them in the first place (yet another topic taken note of in ESD). Did Adam and/or Eve have any, for instance? APPLY your creationism to the data, Chuck. We’re all watching,
LikeLike
Great job, rl. I tell you to reduce or compress your posts and you do eight of them. Eight!! You just are in a world of your own, aren’t you. And Joel, if your actually reading ALL posts, and not just some (i.e. antievolutionists) you will note in a post rj refers to me as a snowflake (a commonly used anti-gay slur). You read THAT and saw it as okay. I assume then you are not actually intending to achieve a fair and civil exchange, but simply to censor those with whom you disagree. I’ll be sure to let lots and lots of people know (including my gay friends) of the homophobic slurs used on this site. What hypocrisy.
Rj, i’ll read your posts when i have time and compress my answers into one. And i’ll be sure to leave out homophobic slurs.
LikeLike
Actually the “snowflake” term pops up among Trump hyper-conservatives assailing their critics among liberals. But move off rhetoric Chuck and discuss data, which so far you have declined to do. Repeatedly you have been asked to document your claims (likewise for Peter), and you have both failed to do so. Nor have you addressed the issues brought up in Joel’s post. You are a troll, and a singularly uninformative one. Not unusual among bottom feeding creationists. If ever you can muster an evidence-based argument, get back to us (like accounting for the therapsids, or why there are so many ALUs in our genome, or why creationists are such incompetents at source scholarship). But so far you have shown yourself quite incapable of doing anything else.
LikeLike
It did seem to me, Chuck, that your poop and goop reference, which you also made somewhere else in fuller form – we “ came from goop and return to poop” or some such. – is the sort of jeering creationist catchphrase that only reveals the biological ignorance of the person who first coined it, and most of those who pass it on, if it is meant to denigrate as demeaning the idea that all life, including ours, has evolved from abiogenetic origins. After all, every one of us human beings is a biological organism that originated when a tiny part of a trickle of goop -otherwise known as semen – was united with a scarcely less goopy egg. And when we die, if we are buried directly in earth rather than cremated or preserved artificially in some way, our bodies will decompose in a very goopy way too. (Not particularly poopy, unless in the admittedly rather unpleasant but accurate sense that our bowels tend to empty at the point of death.) But during our lives we can’t really dissociate ourselves from goop or poop, since our bodies are 90% water, and excretion is one of the essential functions of all living things. Take babies, for example. Most of their care involves inserting goop at one end and clearing up poop at the other. And in a wider sense, how many of the atoms that currently make up your body,having at some point been ingested or breathed in by you or your mother, are likely to have spent time earlier inside other organisms, bacterial, fungal, vegetable or animal, during the history of life on earth, being afterwards excreted or decomposing or more directly ingested by some other organism and forming part of the goop in its digestive system? What goes around comes around. Or, more positively, in light of current campaigns, we are all made up of 100% recycled ingredients.
No, we need to acknowledge and celebrate the importance of goop, and especially the goop (and it does look very goopy indeed when isolated in a test tube) which contains the genetic code which has made us what we are – DNA.
LikeLike
perhaps you missed a prior post addressed to me suggesting, so to speak, that i ingest an unsavory substance. Nothing happens in a vacuum, so a bit of research here might have enlightened. And no, i don’t believe i evolved from primordial soup, so i can’t possibly see why i should somehow acknowledge or honor said goop in any way whatsoever, Believe me though, goop and poop are usually treated with far more honor and respect on sites like this than actual humans do, especially those who disagree with the reigning paradigm as the recently homphobic slur directed towards me is a clear indicator. Gosh, I just can’t fathom why questioners don’t come to this site for all their information. Can you?
LikeLike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_(slang)
‘Snowflake is a 2010s derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. Common usages include the terms special snowflake, Generation Snowflake, and snowflake as a politicized insult. ‘
‘Jonathon Green, editor of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, points out snowflake is an unusual insult in that it calls someone weak and fragile without using misogynistic or homophobic references.’
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for that last post, Christine. I’ve had a very busy few days offline, during which time this site seems to have been inundated by posts which I’ve had no time to read, let alone reply to, but having just seen a post from Chuck addressed to me complaining about the supposedly homophobic slur that someone else he claims inflicted on him by calling him a snowflake, I have to say I was perplexed at the notion that the remark could be seen as homophobic, and wondering why on Earth his gay friends would interpret it as such if he mentioned it to them. I can’t say it’s an insult I’ve ever used myself, but if I HAD used it It would never have occurred to me to think of it as implying homosexuality in the person referred to. Perhaps that’s because none of my pretty numerous gay friends and acquaintances display any snowflake -like characteristics, all of them, though very diverse in age, character, political opinions, leisure interests etc, appearing, if anything, rather more resilient, and less likely to portray themselves as poor helpless victims, than the general run of the population. That Chuck’s gay friends are,by his account, different,I am inclined to think results from their being imaginary and invented purely for polemical reasons. Maybe it’s because he himself has bought into a very outdated stereotype, or has homophobic friends who DO use “snowflake” as an insulting term for gays who object to anti-gay language , that he supposes that this term has some general association with gays.
LikeLike
Yes they STILL think there was a dinosaur group that somehow uniquely was created with kinds within it. i just enlarge the KIND concept to the point that there are just kinds. No dinosaurs or mammals or reptiles. these are false classiofication systems based on lumping/splitting traits.
Then I note that the anatomical evidence for a CERTAIN type of “so called dinsaurs” THEROPOD dinos and probably others ACTUALLY are identical to flightless ground birds. (add a few teeth and tails). indeed this likeness being the origin for why they now say BIRDS are from a branch off the theropod dinos. insteads I correct it by saying that these theropod dinos ARE JUST birds. Just within KINDS of bird. Thats why they have wishbones , feathers, and lay eggs.
Its a spectrum of diversity of flightless ground birds. T rex too.
Researchers, just watch youtube, talk always about how birdlike some dinos were.
Aha. whoops.
LikeLike
Okay, i understand your perspective. Is there any source, even one, that you could guide me to where this outlook is prominent. I like to keep up with my reading, so if you have the time your help would be appreciated. Thanks.
LikeLike
I am your source. its my hypothesis although possibly lots of creationists say it.
On youtube just watch the bird/dino conversations. especially from Horber( I think thats his name) who was a advisor to the jurassic park movies. he has one about how to turn a chicken into a theropod.
LikeLike
Okay Robert, I understand now. And yes, there are lots of different ideas that float around in the evolution community, and various disagreements. But i think you will find that with any branch of science, philosophy, theology, etc. I would only encourage you, though you are certainly free to share whatever you want, that this being a site that focuses on science issues, that there is an expectation of some sort of backing to whatever is shared, some source, other than the poster. Again, you are quite free to share whatever, but i don’t think it will receive any kind of welcoming embrace. And i hope everyone on this site would share what they share in hopes of exchanging, in as civil a manner as possible, relevant information.
LikeLike
Oh Chuck, you are perhaps less familiar with Robert’s output over many years. What you have seen from him so far is literally all you’re ever going to get, verbal deflections and assertions of dogma, but never anything that is grounded in primary source documentation. We’re also having an opportunity to see your method on display, and so far it seems no different from Robert’s.
LikeLike
Thanks rj, love you too. Right here man, right in the heart. You make my eyes well up. But i am sorry, i am going to have to limit you to under 500 posts a day. While the traffic is great for the site, your picture is beginning to appear on wanted posters. Just joking, Joel.
LikeLike
For some reason Word Press or the site’s own organisation wants my reply to Robert’s response to my request for him to elucidate his criteria for classifying animals into groups to appear a long way from his post, despite all I can do. So my apologies if it seems out of place.
Robert, what makes the biologists’ grouping of different species into families and and other larger groupings “fables of classification” whereas,IYO, your own wider grouping of a huge set of species, past and present, into the category of “birds” is no fable but but has some validity? I ask you again, what are the characteristics that cause you to place some species into the “bird” group, while others lie outside it? I know, for you have said so elsewhere,that you don’t consider all birds to be one kind, but even if you did I should want to know how you decide which creatures belong together in a given single kind, and which do not, and how we can tell the difference, and why it is all right for you to talk about birds as if they were members of some recognisable group with features in common,( even though you feel obliged to acknowledge that the bible mentions more than one kind of bird as being on the Ark), but not all right for other people to talk about crocs and snakes and lizards as if they were members of a recognisable group with features in common.
LikeLike
Indeed it seems from genesis that there is not a BIRD kind. Just kinds of birds. What is a bird is based on traits in great sum total. its obvious. So theropod dinos have enough of these traits to be seen as from certain KINDS of birds. Maybe there is another option for why the birds are not one kind. yet on the ark there was two kinds of birds.
LikeLike
Well Robert, perhaps it was because of what occurred towards the end of the flood, there was a need for two different kinds. Couldn’t say for sure, but i don’t believe it was for a non-evolutionary or evolutionary need. Of course you know few on this site even acknowledge an ark or a flood, so these references or questions won’t win anyone over. But thanks for sharing.
LikeLike
Oh, Chuck, baraminology has moved way past just two bird kinds; perhaps you don’t keep up with the creationist technical literature? Pity, others of us do. Creationists have some 10,000 species of living birds to account for, or rather, cram onto the Ark, and the latest count by Lightner in 2013 (reflected in the Ark Encounter mock up) runs around 180 bird kinds. To get that, they’ve had to flush all the fossil data down the drain, and smush together lots of living species (1200 in just their proposed “finch kind”) in a way utterly untenable to account for (phenotype, genetics and biogeography) in only the time since the Ark supposedly settled on the mountains of Ararat. We know that because they haven’t accounted for the phenotypes, genetics and biogeography data in any of their papers on them. But do keep cuddling your cute little dated YEC security blanket in which there are only maybe two bird kinds. It’s quite precious.
LikeLike
Sighhhhhhhhhh. no rj, you don’t keep up with creationist literature. Seeing the utter disdain you have for them as human beings, i can’t imagine why you would want to. My statement had nothing to do with baraminolgy. You’re just seeing what you want to see. Assuming Robert is a christian, it was a theological reference. And seriously, i am going to limit how many of your posts i bother to respond to. So make them meaty and concise. I will just ignore the rest. I will try to choose the most pertinent, relevant and those with the least bile.
LikeLike
What a delight it is to see Chuck thinking that a discussion of how many bird kinds there are (or were, don’t forget the extinct bunch, including all those Mesozoic enantiornithines), doesn’t relate to baraminology, the creationists’ own “scientific” discipline devoted entirely to working out how many created kinds there were. What a sad state it is for grassroots creationists like Chuck to be unaware in his 45 years of study of the last 20 years of modern creationism.
While Chuck may be lackluster here, I keep close tabs on the baraminology work, and Jackson Wheat and I in fact will be calling them to account in various chapters of the new “Rocks Were There” book. The Spoiler Alert: the baraminologists miss most of the data field too (fossil and genetic), and are entangled in a mass of contradictions as they try to cram fossil and extant life into a sufficiently small number of baraminic stalls to keep the Ark from clogging to the gunnels.
LikeLike
“What is a bird is based on traits in great sum total, it’s obvious.”
So if it’s so obvious, Robert, just answer the question I asked and tell me what those traits ARE.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And while he’s at it, Robert could specify what features a dino-bird transitional would need to possess to qualify in his view as a bone fide one (a semilunate carpal? antorbital fenestra? etc), and then compare and contrast with the Mesozoic aviary including Archaeopteryx so we would know how he’d be telling them apart. Or if he could so differentiate them, on account of so many of them actually qualifying as perfectly satisfactory transitionals. As no antievolutionist has done that basic analytical step so far (I keep track of such things in my TIP research), Robert won’t have anybody in the antievo lit to crib off, and will have to think it through on his own.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do get your point Robert. Somehow rapid sand covering or avalanches are not even considered as possibilities in a global flood, earth upheavals, and thus become the go to argument as if they themselves are easy to believe and more rational. This is what you get, Robert, from an a priori argument. Discount what you don’t believe, and however ridiculous is what is left HAS to become the answer.
LikeLike
Usually that is a issue. In this case its another claim. its about a strata level with the higher ones having fossilized creatures that, they think, could not be there in a flood.
My point on that is that fossilization was so instant. these creatures/encased sediment , were turned to stone instantly from pressure and then were en mass moved in layers and deposited on top of other ones. they were alrealy fossilized before lifted up on top of other layers.
this is a option because yEC must ANYWAYS argue they were turned to stone in the flood year. SOME YEC might that months were needed with higher up layers squeezing down. yet in these cases i suggest a better option.
LikeLike
I understand. Some on this site probably assume, incorrectly, that I must be a Ken Ham sycophant. I’ve never questioned their disagreements with Ham, merely their arrogant and childish manner. As i just posted to sally, my reasons for rejecting darwinian evolution are based purely on scientific data, not theological But they assume that if you don’t accept Charle’s theory, you must be an ignorant, unscientific buffoon and a religious fanatic. How sad. And how arrogant. Appreciate your posts.
LikeLike
Wow. Your site always tickles me. You spend so much effort Not proving Darwinian evolution (perhaps you should join thousands of scientists worldwide and move on in search of something better) and so much energy in your (apparently life-affirming) diatribes against Ken Ham et.al. Don’t you have something better to do? What actually are you accomplishing? Do you have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ? Do you think all this effort will in any wise improve mankind’s future? Are you spending so much time in the past that you’ve made no preparation for eternity? Better move on to the important stuff, Ruminating about fossils is probably not going to be much of a relief from darkness, loneliness, and regret. Got any Good News?
LikeLike
Barna Group has found that one major reason young people leave Christianity is that “Churches come across as antagonistic to science” (www.barna.com/research/six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church/). I’ve seen this happen when HS/college students, beginning to study biology or geology seriously, discover that the data contradict the particular Bible interpretation they’ve been taught – and both Christians & atheists around them say the same thing: the two are inherently contradictory, so one has to be jettisoned. They can’t deny the evidence from their own observations, and nobody’s there to tells them it’s not necessary…so there goes faith, sacrificed needlessly to truth. Brethren, these things ought not be!
This blog seeks to provide a voice that says the two aren’t opposed – that seeking truth by doing good science honors God. It’s beneficial for Christians of any age to see people of faith engaging honestly with the data & observations…to paraphrase Bacon, taking God’s word and God’s world seriously.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks. Said so much better than I could say.
LikeLike
see my reply to Mel.
LikeLike
I agree with you. It is unfortunate. But fortunately, I am not required, by God or man, to account for other’s beliefs or reactions. Truly, christians are woefully ignorant of what their individual churches may teach, if they do at all. But be careful with the “”good science” argument. Sounds suspiciously similiar to the “real science” argument, an ad hominem ploy that’s over used by evolutionists. And an ignorance or lack of acknowledgement that there a lots of scientists all over the world who practice good and real science, yet remain unconvinced of evolutionary arguments. Some want include God in this process (called Theistic Evolutionists) but don’t seem to get the oxymoron in the very title, and don’t seem to realize that sticking evolution after theistic doesn’t accrue one more iota of respect from naturalistic scientists.
LikeLike
Do you ever READ the articles on this site, Chuck, when you come on here to express your conviction that Joel is imperilling his soul by not devoting all his time to spreading the Good News, instead of setting the scientific record straight?(Though you don’t seem to be worried that Ken Ham might be imperilling HIS soul by building a vast business peddling fantasy and lies as scientific and historical truth.)
If you read, or reread, the article above about this dinosaur nest site, and indeed the comments that follow, you won’t find one mention of evolution, which although it is the backbone of modern biological science is not relevant to this particular discussion. The article and comments are entirely about the how this site, and thousands of others, prove that the highly imaginative YEC attempts to reconcile the fossil and geological evidence with the Biblical Flood narrative are codswallop.
Do you have NO scientific arguments you can put forward to explain how this site is compatible with YEC Flood narratives?Or are you afraid even to read the article lest it cause you to doubt, just a little, the truth of what you have been taught you must assert, or risk your salvation? If it IS the truth, though, why fear? And if it isn’t, why would God want you to spread falsehoods?
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s very possible that Chuck doesn’t really read the stuff here, or does so solely from an apologetic perspective, looking for ways to insert the dogmatic desires into the narrative. Of course Joel isn’t seeing the need to reprise the last 150 years of science that establishes natural evolution is the successful working paradigm. He skips showing the proof for heliocentrism and relativity too (all that is part of the scientifically literate kit bag).
It is a reasonable surmise Chuck thinks he knows what the evolution data field is based on what trimmed accounts of it he’s encountered in the antievolution world. In that case he’ll have no clue on the strength of that evidence (my go-to of course is the reptile-mammal transition, since I know how much that one is avoided across the board in antievolutionism, from doctrinal YECers, out through what’s left of Old Earth creationism, and on into the Creationism Lite of Intelligent Design).
LikeLiked by 1 person
and to mr downard, your response is oh so typical of the arrogant. Apparently your key argument is that someone who disagrees with you or articles on this site must be somehow “ignorant”. And to your statement “strength of evidence”, if the argument is so strong, why are there so many different striations of evolutionary arguments, disagreements, unanswered questions, and why are scientists by the thousands leaving evolution behind because of it’s inability to answer those questions? You must learn to distinguish between proofs and assumptions. And you missed my point entirely. It wasn’t in this case, about whether evolution is true or not, but where one is expending one’s very short lifespan. See my answer to sally. Your reply assumes the position of “if one really understands the argument, one HAS to agree with it”. I’m glad real science doesn’t work this way. Or real debate.
LikeLike
Arrogant I may be, Chuck, but uninformed on the full range of creationist apologetics and the methodology of the many grassroots secondary redactors (like you) I am not. I track literally thousands of antievolutionists and many more thousands of their works, along with the technical science work they may bring up along the way (in a way so far you have not). By such manner I am able to observe (arrogantly or not) that antievolutionists overall are missing 90% of the relevant data field (that’s tens of thousands of technical papers), and do a piss poor job of the dealing with the slimmer 10% they do bump into.
If at any point you start addressing data (and offer sources for them) be prepared to defend your usage of them at the data floor level, where I will inquire (arrogantly or not) whether you fact check the claims you make (I’m more than happy to do likewise regarding my source base).
LikeLiked by 1 person
wow, rj, what a waste of a life. 90% huh?(forgive me if i am a bit skeptical). What shall your epitaph be? “I came from goop, I end as poop”(fertilizer). While i am sure all this “tracking” gives you an intellectual high, I hope someday you invest in things a bit more permanent. Sounds like you have all the “facts” lined up. If so, how come thousands of degree’d scientists would disagree with you (and by far they are not all creationists, or don’t you have those facts in front of you)? Evolution is bankrupt. There are no “proofs”, just a priori readings INTO what is known in order to get a predetermined answer. It’s called “circular” reasoning. And just because you come up with an “answer” to a challenge doesn’t mean the answer is actually sufficient as a rebuttal. Both sides can be guilty of this. It reminds me of the dislike among many scientists of “intelligent design”. They don’t accept it, not because there isn’t overwhelming evidence of design throughout this earth and the universe, but because they don’t like the implications, i.e., design would imply a designer (God) and the apparent implication of accountability. (with all your accumulated facts, I’m sure you’ve come across naturalistic scientists who are honest enough to admit this. I know I have). To be fair though, some would, with much hesitation, accept the possibility of “aliens” as designers, but this only begs the question and sends it into a regressive argument ad infinitum. Again, as I said to Sally, my original post here was not to debate evolution per se, but to address this sites obsession with Ken Ham et. al. Seems such a waste of a precious life(lives). If two sides are contradictory, they can’t both be right. They could, however, both be wrong.
LikeLike
“If two sides are contradictory, they can’t both be right. They could, however, both be wrong.” And that is indubitably true, except in the cases where there ARE only two possibilities to be decided between, which is rarely the case with anything as complex as science, let alone something as insubstantial and abstract as religious doctrine. Personally, I feel it’s most probable that ALL religious believers are mistaken about there being any supernatural Being that intentionally created the universe, by any method, so that when their narratives contradict each other they are all wrong, but I may be wrong myself, of course. And I am quite sure that much of what mainstream science currently thinks is the best explanation for various phenomena will turn out later to be either wrong or woefully incomplete. That has always been the way it is with human knowledge. We rely on the discoveries and insights of our forebears, but use these to discover yet more stuff, which enables us to adapt, refine, extend or overturn earlier theories. However scientists tend not to go back to some earlier widely held idea, once it has been discredited and a better explanation come up with. I doubt whether any but the lunatic fringe will ever advocate a flat earth again. Or phlogiston.
LikeLiked by 1 person
well, you are right about lunatic fringes, as one can see from posts on the internet proclaiming that the earth is flat (altho i think many of them are just trollers trying to stir things up. I would still argue that two contrary theories can’t both be right but both can be wrong, regardless of how many you add to the mix. And i agree that the history of science is not one of easy and smooth transitions (Kuhn’s book is helpful here) but one where a currently held consensus is eventually proven to be incorrect and is replaced by a hopefully more correct one. Atheists and skeptics like to posit that christians don’t like science. Personally, i love science. What i don’t find particularly appealing is the incredible arrogance many scientists display towards those who disagree with them (including other scientists). And of course you are entitled to your opinion. Or, as Oprah said, you should be free to speak YOUR truth. I’m in disagreement with here on this, though. To quote a retort I read referring to here statement, there is no “your” truth, There’s just THE truth, and our opinions of it. In my hundreds (perhaps by now thousands) of posts on blog sites dealing with science, my objective has never been to change someone’s mind. I mean, have you EVER seen or read someone actually changing their mind about something in blog posts? Usually they’re all just rantings, ventings, or arrogant postulations, filled with ad hominem attacks designed not for the interchange and consideration of other views but simply to declare opponents as ignorant (notice the references to “real science” that are tossed out on this site, and others, by those holding a certain opinion). Thus my references to wasted time. Nobody changes their minds, The effort is a waste. Better spent on something of higher, even eternal, value. I’m not judging, just cajoling. It’s one’s life. Spend as you will.
LikeLike
I’ve certainly learned new stuff myself from blog posts, and have changed my mind insofar as I have been corrected on matters of fact and accepted and acknowledged freely that I had been mistaken or had misremembered, or that new data or interpretations had superseded what had been previously thought. (Though I did need to first be convinced that the corrector was trustworthy in this context, and that the evidence for the correction was provided.) I have also apologised perfectly sincerely when I felt at a later point that I had been too trigger happy or brutal to some honest and well meaning, even if misguided or ignorant, individual in the heat of debate, and contributed to a toxic atmosphere. (When I’ve been rude or sarcastic and NOT apologised, that is usually because I am not convinced that the person whose posts I attacked has been honest or well intentioned towards others on the site himself. I don’t find it humiliating in itself to admit to error or weakness, intellectual or moral, since my failings are sufficiently apparent to myself as well as others, while I have always admired those who do have the humility and honesty to admit their mistakes). My emotional investment is primarily not in any particular scientific theory ,even though I do find the overarching structure of evolutionary theory very satisfying for the huge range of facts in a multitude of disciplines that it interconnects and illuminates. But even more important to me is that I, and humanity in general, should seek truth, and pursue this quest even when it leads us to accept that we had earlier got things wrong.
Some scientist (possibly Huxley) lamented jocularly about “a beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact”. I understand how he felt. But if the fact really is a fact, and its actuality really does destroy the theory in its current form, and there is no way to tweak the theory to accommodate the fact, then the theory has to be abandoned.
Currently, though, what I see happening in the world of science, and online, is not the paradigm of evolutionary theory being overturned, but it continuing to reign, and to provide ever more illumination, despite the obfuscatory efforts of a group of adherents of much earlier paradigms of miraculous creation by a deity, as related in their sacred text, or an ordered universe being evidence of deliberate intelligent design, who claim, in the teeth of the evidence, that there is a new paradigm, when what they are advocating is in truth only the old exploded one, repackaged.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A good article about how evolutionary theory is evolving; a lot of insider stuff but you can bypass that if you cut to the bullet points. Massimo Pigliucci is a highly regasrded buiologist turned philosopher; MS = modern syntheisi (the thery as it was, say, in 1950), ES = extended synthesis (whre we are now): https://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/the-ongoing-evolution-of-evolutionary-theory/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi, Chuck. Can you provide a source on “thousands of degree’d scientists would disagree with you”? The only such lists I’ve seen have a relatively small proportion of actual biologists, and I’d like to read more. Thanks!
LikeLike
well, assuming you’re not just a troller recruited by rj, and assuming you aren’t going to make the genetic fallacy argument, there are thousands of scientists worldwide who are members of different creation societies who do not sign on to darwinian evolution. There was also a recent letter released signed by over a thousand scientists requesting more scrutiny be given to the evolutionary paradigm (and no, they weren’t all creationists or ID. In fact, the ID discovery institute asked ID adherents NOT to sign on, not because they thought they were wrong, but because they knew they would endanger their jobs or tenure). Jerry Bergman’s “slaughter of the dissidents” would be a good starting point for this latter point. Like Nash, the philosoper of science, they have become more vocal about how darwinian evolution fails to answer or explain much of what we observe in the “circle of Life” (picture the Lion King movie playing in the background. Especially with the dna genome being completed. Information, Mel. Information. Especially the addition of beneficial, helpful information.
Again, I don’t know you nor have i ready any other of your posts, so forgive me if i am a bit leery. Besides, I have to answer six or seven of rj’s posts every day or two, so my time is limited. But if you are serious, I certainly would be willing to help you a bit more specifically. But virtually all that you requested can be found easily on line.
LikeLike
I think it’s probably best to stick to normal protocol where the one making the claim provides the evidence – that way we both know we’re looking at the same information, and I know that I’m examining the sources you found most convincing.
Time’s not a problem; I’m in no hurry. Get around to it whenever you get around to it – thanks in advance.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Just so you know where I’m coming from (since you’re wondering if I’m “a troller recruited by rj”), here is the Pew survey data I’m referring to.
https://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/
(Just the first section is relevant to this thread.)
and https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/07/23/an-elaboration-of-aaas-scientists-views/ (specifics on whether the scientists involved have relevant expertise)
Obviously, this is only Americans, but it seems likely that scientists from other countries fall in similar places along the continuum since they’re working from the same data (unless someone has evidence to the contrary).
LikeLiked by 1 person
okay. i certainly didn’t mean to insult you by my “troller” reference. I wasn’t saying you were, justing asking if you were actually seeking information. I have experienced the “recruitment” syndrome several times before on other sites. Thank you for your response.
LikeLike
you know we all see what we want to see. When i read this link, it only substantiated that everyone enters the arena with an agenda, and preconceived notions. It would certainly make sense that those in the sciences would in large numbers buy into the evolutionary paradigm, seeing as how that is all they are exposed to, from high school, to colleges, to universities, etc. In fact, at secular schools, that is ALL they are even allowed to be exposed to. Doesn’t exactly encourage free thinking does it. So the conclusion of the articles is that people believe what they are taught, whether secular or religious. That’s not very comforting either. Kind of reduces the chance for objective studies or beliefs. But thank you for the link. It was interesting and informative.
LikeLike
Mel, don’t hold your breath
LikeLike
thanks Paul. Another witty response.
LikeLike
what exactly are we exchanging information on. With all these posts and responses, i am not quite sure where we are? And seeing as how claims have been made on all sides, which one or ones are we addressing. Just asking for a little help here.
LikeLike
strangely enough sally, I do read the articles here. My suggestion here was not that someone goes to hell because they believe in darwinian evolution, but because they spend their life’s efforts arguing about something no one witnessed in contrast with something that many people did. If what WAS witnessed offers the chance of eternal life, why spend so much time speculating about some supposed event, no matter how long a time, that no one saw. Which would you give priority to? And sorry Sally, but to pretend that articles on this site do not promote darwinian evolution is both disingenuous and factually ignorant. Perhaps the question is, do YOU read the articles on this site?
LikeLike
Hi Chuck. Sure, I read the articles here. I am notified when Joel posts a new one, and also when new comments and replies are posted, and that prompts me to come and read them and respond. Don’t you do the same? Which is why I found it curious a) that you chose THIS particular article, which was NOT concerned with Darwinian evolution but with the wild YEC inventions trying to reconcile the fossil evidence with their Flood narrative, to respond to with an accusation that Joel was frittering his time away trying, (and failing, IYO) to prove Darwinian evolution instead of preaching the Good News, thereby imperilling his soul. And b) that you don’t remove the beam from your own eye, if you are so concerned about the possible mote in the eye of your fellow Christian, Joel, and stop frittering away your own time here arguing with people who, whether Christian or non Christian, are hardly likely to be converted by you to turn away from good science to your bad science, and whose salvation, as you say, is not dependent on their beliefs about the geological and biological history of the earth, anyway. After all, you could be out preaching the gospel to Moslems and Hindus and all the other nonBelievers in Jesus who are otherwise, owing to God having for some reason ordained that they be born into Buddhist or Sikh or Ba’hai or Scientological families and communities, heading straight for hell. Some of them are even already on board with the idea of infallible holy scriptures straight from the mouth of God. You just have to persuade them that their current holy text is the wrong one and you’ve got the right one. Good luck!
LikeLiked by 1 person
ahhh, nothing more refreshing than a universalist rebuttal. good luck with that. Perhaps you are newer here than i am, or you would have noted previous posts that addressed the same point that i make here. I love the totally unbiased viewpoint that those who may disagree with you have “bad science” while yours is the good version. How open minded and unbiased of you, sally. Perhaps r j can give you some of his many facts and statistics showing you the tens of thousands of scientists worldwide (almost all of whom got their degrees at secular universities that teach evolution, by the way) who don’t buy into darwinian evolution. Whether someone is a theistic scientist should no more disparage their science than should someone being an atheist. So, i didn’t “just” strangely pick this particular post. I’ve done this often. And if you have read as many of the posts on this site as I have, you should certainly have picked up on an apparent obsession with Ken Ham et. al. And again, for the hard of reading, I did NOT state that believing in evolution of any type “imperils” your soul. But ignoring the one remedy for our human foibles and instead spending vast portions of your life obsessing with YEC’s such as Ham might very well indicate that your gaze is focused on the wrong object. So, if you can’t accurately read my posts, don’t bother responding to them.
LikeLike
I don’t know what you mean by a “universalist rebuttal”, Chuck, so I have no idea why I should be supposed to need good luck with it. I have a suspicion that it’s simply that I wished YOU good luck converting the practitioners of other religions, and you have been taught in YEC circles that it is effective rhetoric to turn your discussion opponents’ criticisms of your arguments and methodology, and their very turns of phrase, back on them, whether or not these are actually applicable, or even make sense in the new context.
It would seem from your use of what appears to be a piece of specialist religious/philosophical jargon, that this is your area of expertise, rather than anything scientific. After all not only have you used no scientific technical language, you haven’t yet made a single comment on the data in Joel’s article, or provided any data or commentary of your own on the subject, despite being asked to do so more than once. And you don’t seem very much geared to providing any evidence or citations to back up the assertions you do make, either. The main point, repeated in more than one post here, is about the number of scientists who have spurned the idea of evolution. They seem to have grown by a factor of ten at least since you started posting in this comment section, which is remarkably quick work. At this rate we might conjecture that there will be no scientific advocates of evolutionary theory left by the end of the year. Alternatively we might decide that it is more probable that your assertions are based on no actual solid data at all, and that the figure gets larger and larger as you get more heated in debate, or simply every time you repeat the point. (Being an Eng Lit specialist myself, I was forcibly reminded of Falstaff retelling the Gads Hill episode in Henry IV Part I.) However, even in the absence of reference to actual surveys or other data I have no difficulty believing that quite a lot of American and Canadian religious fundamentalists who needed scientific qualifications for their chosen careers, or wanted to be able to cite their scientific credentials when later engaging in professional religious controversy in support of Creationism, have managed to acquire degrees in science from secular universities either without their already formed and religiously based rejection of evolutionary theory being relevant to their field of study or by their hiding these views and dissimulating where necessary. But I should be very surprised if you can provide us here with reliable evidence of a sizeable number of people who had not been already taught in church and/or school and/or home and/or by religious friends, at some stage, to reject evolutionary theory, but who nonetheless started out accepting it and then changed their minds as they learnt more in their science lectures or practicals, . A FEW there may be. Some people thrive on conspiracy theories and supposed cover ups, loving the idea that the gullible masses have had the wool pulled over their eyes, but that THEY are too clever to follow the crowd. Why, I even met one Flat Earther in person a few months back.He was also an antivaxxer, government instigated 9/11 believer etc.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sally, I hope you are self-aware enough to see, as you reread your post, how many audacious assumptions and presumptions you made. You seem to think that YOUR ideas are based ONLY on “good science” and that anyone disagreeing with you who has scientific qualifications MUST have had some sort of ulterior motive (apparently religious) for this. You don’t seem to think that they might enjoy science as much as you do, or with “pure, real science” motives. How arrogantly presumptuous. As you will read in my other reply to you, this is an example of the arrogance of which i wrote, Why do you think this is an effective way to communicate? And as to a “lack” of scientific facts, is there one you can think of that would actually change your mind? Of course not. As you accuse others of doing, you already have a set of beliefs you’ve defined as truth. Everything you approach in science has this as it’s basis. You are open to nothing. It’s all been decided. All that’s left for you to do is interpret every new fact you encounter to conform with your current beliefs. If this is true, it has little to do with “real science”. If you want to debate science, real science, I will gladly do so. All of my objections to darwinian evolution find their basis in science, not theology. I’ve never, in over 12 years of debating, once quoted the Bible unless someone asked me a question about it. But in your head and heart I’m pretty sure you’ve already decided that not only will you NOT change your mind, but that you CAN’T. If I am wrong, let me know. You’ll be the first.
LikeLike
“Whether someone is a theistic scientist should no more disparage their science than should someone being an atheist.”
Very true. Shouldn’t and doesn’t, within and without the scientific community. I happily acknowledge the pioneering scientific work of Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Mendel, Faraday and thousands of other devout Christian scientists, past and present, and the equally devout Babylonians, Jews, Moslems and followers of other religions who made huge strides in astronomy, mathematics and medicine in centuries where western science was lagging behind.
There is absolutely no reason why a scientist’s religious belief, or lack of religious belief, should adversely affect his or her scientific work, unless influential religious authority figures decree that the scientific findings conflict with what they are teaching, and seek to interfere, as the Catholic Church did with Galileo,and as some American fundamentalists have tried to do with school science teaching in this and the last century. Or unless the scientist feels obliged, when faced with a conflict between a religious doctrine he or she has hitherto accepted and the scientific evidence, to ignore or distort the evidence rather than rethink the doctrine.
But most religious believers, whether trained scientists or just people with an interest in the world around them, are not placed in those trying conditions. They don’t see the Big Bang Theory (which after all a Catholic priest first proposed) as conflicting with the idea of God creating the universe, even if it didn’t happen as described in Genesis 1. And similarly they take it that an omnipotent creator could perfectly well have planned the evolution of life into all its current variety by means of natural selection.
So do try not to misrepresent the views of Joel and the other “evolutionist” posters here. We are not disparaging any scientist or nonscientist for being theist. Some at least of us are theists ourselves. But we ARE disparaging the science of those who try to argue that the scientific evidence supports, or is even compatible with, the idea that the earth is only a few thousand years old, or that there was during historical times a flood of water that covered all the land, or that animals did not evolve from a common ancestor but were created directly in their various “kinds”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Appreciate your acknowledge of my main point in that post, but your claim that “it shouldn’t and doesn’t” is either incredibly naive or a lack of factual knowledge. It HAS, and it still DOES. This is quite verifiable. Perhaps Bergman’s ” Slaughter of the Dissidents” should be required reading for the scientifically naive.
And your reference to Galileo and the church is again evident of a preference to believe anything that supports your adulation of science over religion. The truth of this story is far more complex. You must know that geocentrism was the prevailing “scientific consensus” at that time. Religious authorities were quite aware that they weren’t scientists, and were also aware that nowhere in the bible is it said that the earth was the center of everything. Truth be known, the Pope at that time was quite friendly towards Galileo and could even be considered a sponsor. But old Galileo was a contentious and arrogant man. He wrote a story (very thinly disguised) of two men discussing scientific issues. One was, of course, Galileo (he didn’t use his name). The other was the pope (not referenced as such). One character was written of in glowing terms, the other was insulted. Obviously, excuse my french, the pope was pissed. Here he is supporting Galileo and this is what he gets. Everyone knew the underlying implications of this story. And to top it off, our friend Galileo starts spouting off about that which he knew little , theology. This is why he was tried and condemned heretical. NOT for his science, but his theology. Though this urban myth is found helpful for those wanting to impose a wall of separation between religion and science, it is not factual. A little research would have revealed this to you. As I said in my other posts, you want to debate science, fine. But don’t bother if you don’t believe there is more for you to learn, even things that go against your current consensus. Others have tried this with me, and the process was not pleasant. But as I said, no one changes their minds, so the time is wasted. So “debate” is useless and unproductive. But if you want to exchange scientific “facts”, I’d be more than happy to.
LikeLike
Just to add, Chuck, that my earlier posts were not intended to suggest that Joel was NOT concerned to promote acceptance of the theory of evolution, which of course he is, together with all other good science. I simply wondered why you chose to respond to an article which was about a different topic with reference to his writings on evolution, and absolutely no discussion of the specific topic of his article. But you’ve posted again, I see. Maybe you’ve got round to that now.
LikeLike
No, still nothing from you, Chuck, on dinosaurs or the Flood or geological layers or the fossil record. Only indignant complaints about me accusing you of bad science. Indeed, I was probably wrong to do so, simply on the basis of you being anti-evolution. You don’t seem, on the evidence of your posts here, to have any interest in science at all, let alone be a practitioner of it, good or bad. So I withdraw the accusation. Until a person makes some attempt, however sketchy, to actually engage in scientific research or debate or thought, it is impossible to assess the quality of his science. If you claimed that your anti-evolutionary opinions were derived from your scientific research I might be justified in supposing that your science must be bad, since the weight of the evidence is so much the other way. But you have made no such claim for yourself, only that some other people who are scientifically trained are anti-evolution. Nor have you actually endorsed, here at any rate, Ken Ham’s assertions, or any specific “scientific” account of the history of life on earth. Your opposition to the idea of evolution is purely on religious grounds. IYO, if a scientific narrative conflicts with the stories in Genesis then it must be wrong, regardless of the evidence in its favour. And you apparently see no value in humans seeking to learn as much as possible about the workings of the planet we live on for our “brief” lifetimes, or to distinguish fact from fiction, when we could be preparing for the eternal afterlife you believe is to come. No, I apologise for the insulting insinuation that you have any connection with science at all.
LikeLike
In my email is notification of a post by Robert Byers, wherein he comments on the article along his usual lines. However, when I followed the link here the post is nowhere to be seen, and when I replied to it in the space that was presented my post too vanished. Did Robert delete his post, or did you? Or is it just me that cannot see his post and replies to it?
LikeLike
i did reply but don’t see my post. I’ll wait if its fixed otherwise make another one in a few days.
LikeLike
Ah, whatever the problem was it seems to be fixed now, Robert. Your post, and both my earlier replies, are now visible. Technology can be a pain!
LikeLike
When I read such posts, I wonder whether the soft tissue in dinosaurs bones would be regarded a problem here for old age theories?
LikeLike
When I read such comments, I wonder whether the entire sedimentary, palaeontological, radiometric,cosmological, and indeed archaeological records would be regarded as a problem for Flood Geology theories.
Re: dinosaur bone soft tissue in particular, I do not think (subject to correction) that Joel has dealt with it at length here, although he does touch on the topic in https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2017/05/16/wheres-the-dna-young-earth-creationism-and-the-search-for-ancient-dna/ , and there is a careful summary of two decades of work in https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue/
My apologies were going so far off topic, but I hope this answers peer’s question
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for that link Paul. Part of the reason I haven’t dealt with the question of preservation of soft tissues is that it has been addressed far better than I could do myself and LetterstoCreationists does a great job and I’ve referenced that post in the past. I find myself at odds with Fuzale Rana quite a bit but I do think that his book and articles that address this issue provide a good overview as well. I do have an extensive reference collection on this topic and have a running macro to find any new articles that pertain to this subject so I keep up on it but don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said.
LikeLike
Well, Paul, I know you think so. I am assuming here that you trust the results (those released) of all of these dating methods, and the assumptions that go with them. Not that you can’t make assumptions while practicing science, but how “firm” you believe an certain these assumptions are, not to mention correct, will most likely effect how much trust one puts in them.,
LikeLike
Yes, Chuck, we can trust the dating methods. What creationist sources that you never bothered to fact check prompted you to think otherwise? Share with the class …
LikeLiked by 1 person
Now i fear you are just a troller, rj. You have actually NEVER read in dating literature (and i do not refer here to EHarmony) that often tests give quite different dates for the same material, or material dated at different venues? And you have NO knowledge of disagreeable results being tossed in preference for results that conform to the paradigm? Nothing? Never? See, rj, this is the problem with faith practiced with science, it becomes scientism. And as an avid student of world religions and philosophies, if it’s an “ism”, it’s becomes a religion or a philosophy. And there the danger lies with an abject trust in whatever you are taught or told is science and it’s results. I am truly glad there have been great discoverers in all fields of study that were willing to buck the consensus, otherwise we specifically would have had little or no “real science” done through the ages.. And see my previous posts. And remember, I do have a life, so if you are attempting to burn it up with wasted posts, try to do it with an open mind. I already know what you believe. I don’t need a hundred more posts to understand. Loving a good beneficial debate as much as the next person, I would gladly indulge if i thought you were interested in achieving more than just preaching to yourself. If that’s all you’re doing, please excuse my absence from your worship service.
LikeLike
“Now i fear you are just a troller, rj. You have actually NEVER read in dating literature (and i do not refer here to EHarmony) that often tests give quite different dates for the same material, or material dated at different venues? And you have NO knowledge of disagreeable results being tossed in preference for results that conform to the paradigm? Nothing? Never? ”
I do indeed keep track of the dating literature, Chuck, & also the various claims by creationists on these things, & the primary sources being cited on them. I must ask you if you Chuck have ever actually read that dating literature, or is it that you have merely repeated what is claimed about them by creationists (Walt Brown for instance). If ever you want to dive in with a specific, by all means do so, and we can proceed from there in the source analysis department.
LikeLike
It’s ironic, rj, that you decry that creationists are just repeating what they read somewhere, using the same old tired (you would call them) statements, and then you turn around and use the same old tired statements (i would call them) that evolutionists use. You don’t even see it, do you? The double standards employed. And you actually didn’t even answer my question. And, heaven above, can anyone here in the evolution camp even POSSIBILITY post without using the genetic fallacy? Could anyone even pretend that there are contrary viewpoints not solely propagated by sub-humans or the mentally deficient? For goodness sakes, do you not see the self worship that goes on with this bullcrap? The myopic, closed minded method that guarantees that one will never encounter a different viewpoint that has any substance? It just becomes sickening, especially when science is supposed to be about discovery, open minded research. As i said prior, scientism is just another religion.
LikeLike
Are you sure that we can trust the dating methods, rjdownward?
Let’s check if you really trust them…
1) Salty seas…with the current, known accumulation, and assuming fresh water at T=0, the seas can only be around for 60-70 million years.
2) Erosion…with current known erosion and orogenesis levels the continents can only be 10-20 million years,
3) sedimentation of the oceans…with current measured rates they are no older than 15-20 million of years,
4) Helium in the atmosphere…radiodecay produces Helium. Corrected for the escape velocity of Helium to space, the earth can be no older than 1,5 million years,
5) Biomolecules in bones of ratites show a T1/2 of approx 550 years. So, dinosaurs containing DNA cannot be older than a few dozen of thousand years,
6) DNA decay, diploid organisms have a natural backup of genes, so selection is unable to detect mutations in individual genes. DNA of diploid genes can be no older than 100 thousand years.
Etcetera etcetera
Most dating methods give us a young earth, i.e. an earth that is younger than 100 million years. Do you trust them?
LikeLike
This is a standard cut and paste. You will find these zombie arguments discussed ad nauseam in compendia such as talk origins and Panda’s thumb. Do your own homework.
And you mentioned the dinosaur soft tissue issue earlier, and I referred you then to a detailed discussion. But if you don’t pay attention to your own posts, I see no reason why I should continue to do so
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, peer, Paul is out, and disqualified. Notice not one answer here, except to embrace the very error you warned against. It’s the old genetic fallacy. Feel free to disregard contradictions. After all, he already has his coveted and worshipful paradigm. Just go on to hell if you disagree with him. And notice, of course, the included insults. Always, always, the sign that someone, through self-delusion, has lost the argument. And is juvenile.
LikeLike
Chuck, not only Paul is out and disqualified, also his two likers: Joel Duff and MrDownward. Paul’s sources are also interesting: The Talkorigins is offline since 2004 (after the Darwian hypotheses were oversthrown by the new biology data and no longer defendable) and the Panda’s Thumb is Darwinian apologetics. What about the panda’s teeth and claws? His dislike for meet…The panda shows us the edge of evolution. And that Darwin devolves. The sad thing here is that Paul and his likers adopted a creed, and as we all know: Science committed suicide when it adopted the Darwian creed (free after Huxley). Check out my new book at Amazon (Darwin Revisited) and you know why current evotheory is wrong and how we can understand biology in our age of the new biology.
LikeLike
The only new book of that title would be Peter Borger’s one, no preview is available, but at 252 pages it’s about half the page length of my Evolution Slam Dunk (100 pages of which is just the bibliography, in small print). I have some of Peter’s works in my TIP data field (which arguments I would assume he’d be incorporating into his book):
Borger, Peter. 2008a. “Evidence for the design of life: part 1—genetic redundancy.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 22 (2): 79-84.
________. 2008b. “Evidence for the design of life: part 2—Baranomes.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 22 (3): 68-76.
________. 2009a. “Evidence for the design of life: part 3—an introduction to variation-inducing genetic elements.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 23 (1): 99-106.
________. 2009b. “Evidence for the design of life: part 4—variation-inducing genetic elements and their function.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 23 (1): 107-114.
Borger, Peter, & Royal Truman. 2007. “The HAR1F gene a Darwinian paradox.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 21 (3): 55-57.
Truman, Royal, & Peter Borger. 2007a. “Genetic code optimisation: Part 1.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 21 (2): 90-100.
________. 2007b. “Genetic code optimisation: Part 2.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 21 (3): 84-92.
________. 2007c. “Why the shared mutations in the Hominidae exon X GULO pseudogene are not evidence for common descent.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 21 (3): 118-127.
________. 2008a. “Genome truncation vs. mutational opportunity: can new genes arise via gene duplication?—Part 1.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 22 (1): 99-110.
________. 2008b. “Genome truncation vs. mutational opportunity: can new genes arise via gene duplication?—Part 2.” Journal of Creation (AKA Answers in Genesis Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal) 22 (1): 111-119.
LikeLike
Why thank you peer. I promise that i will check it out. I’ve been looking for a fresh new read. Thanks again.
LikeLike
I read through the letterstocreationists post – thanks for sharing. That was so interesting!
LikeLike
These are incredibly weak arguments and do nothng to falsify an ancient earth. I’ve written about almost all of these on my blog. Just taking the salty sea one if you think that this is a good argument then I have to conclude you have done little reading of literature other than YEC since this this has been written about in multiple articles and in books. If these are the best arguments that YECs can muster then they have a truly weak case to make.
LikeLike
says an unbiased and truly objective mind. as i said to Paul, of course there are answers. and then answers to those answers and answers to those, ad nauseum. The only question, for both sides, would be is anyone, anyone, interested in finding real solutions or just comforting answers to supposed turmoil. Surely you know that your answers have responses. And please, for one if you can, steer clear of the genetic fallacy. It cheapens your response.
LikeLike
Joel Duff, there is no scientific substance in your rebuttal. The Lyell-Darwin paradigm has been falsified beyon any scientific doubt. Your problem now is that you have adopted the Darwinian creed, while we know since over 50 years it is wrong. You make the same mistake as the RCC eons ago, when she adopted Greek Philophy and had to backpaddle when creationists discovered heliocentrism. If you read my book, you will understand why your creed is wrong and how we can understand biology in a 21st centurs framework. Or, as my late mate, John A Davison, used to say: “You can lead them to the literature, but you cannot let them read”.
LikeLike
I’ve written multiple articles on most of these points. Plenty of documentation there.
LikeLike
“Lyell-Darwin” paradigm … two of the YEC bugbears joined at the hyphen. And still nothing in the way of substance from you, Peter. How about those therapsids, and your own jaw embryology, and why the same genes governing the articular-quadrate are still in play in our mammalian evolved counterparts moved up into the middle ear. The data exist, and your call to search out the science is one we’ve heeded, which is why we’re not creationists. (btw it is 2019, and the vast majority of the primary source technical work, even historic ones, are directly accessible at no cost. I know, because as a not rolling in dough researcher, every open access work is a joy to the scholar’s heart.)
LikeLike
Now remember peer, all that is required is to associate you with YEC and your viewpoints are magically refuted. You’ll find it in virtually every post found on this site and others like it. It’s an intellectually lazy tactic, but leaves the user self satisfied. It’s used to fool-proof one’s own argument, at least to one’s own self
LikeLike
Well, peer, rj has been asking for facts. Let’s see how he responds.
LikeLike
Since peer’s original post did not include any sources for any of the dating claims (and they are all ones familiar to critics of creationism), should peer wish to document any of the claims, then we can proceed on whether they have the facts correct in the first place (that source checking thing secondary source addicts are so bad at).
LikeLike
I notice your string of characters lacked accompanying sources, peer. If obtained from a secondary source (Henry Morris for example), do please specify that. As for the claims being made, should you venture to the source level on any of them, then we can examine more closely who is or is not assessing the data accurately.
LikeLike
Why should peer waste his or her time? Every source quoted will be shot down by the genetic fallacy, and the only quotes you would accept are from people who apparently don’t believe in what they believe in. You certainly know how to rig the game.
LikeLike
Incorrect, Chuck. peer and your reluctance to defend your threadbare creationist claims at source level aren’t being dismissed by me because of any genetic fallacy, they’re wrong because when examined at source level it turns out that the creationists are misrepresenting the data field. Remember the data, the stuff that’s supposed to be accounted for? About which sources you again decline to offer (and then be willing to defend, under the lens of Source Methods scrutiny).
The mistakes being made in the dating game claims are many, and documented by decades of analysts (have you read any of them, Chuck?). Citing dated sources that have been superseded by more precise work, for example, or cherry-picking factoids without noting the explanatory context that conflicts with the creationist spin. Or flat out mistakes, as I and my coauthor Jackson Wheat found while writing our new book regarding a claim on coral growth that creationist Ariel Roth made back in 1998, and which was being repeated in one of the Answers books without fact checking by John Whitmore in 2010, that turned out to be both wrong and made up, as Roth’s old primary sources (one going back all the way to 1915!) turned out to be available for checking, and showed that Roth either doesn’t know how to read, and/or just hallucinates stuff.
The only genetic thing here would involve DNA goofs somewhere in the brain circuits of Roth & Whitmore to account for the fallacy they presented as fact. As for what accounts for your behavior here in this chat thread, Chuck, so far we’ve seen nothing from you more athletic than basic credulity and laziness.
LikeLike
Dear friends,
when theories do not have problems, when they are able to explain all possible observations, they cannot be scientific. Ever heard of Popper? Theories have to be falsifiable.There have to be observations that falsify the proposition of old ages. What could those observations be? Can you name one?
https://www.icr.org/article/11295
LikeLike
I am glad you mentioned Popper, whose 1930s views are often quoted in this context. Popper’s thinking was further advanced by his colleague Lakatos, who pointed out that series are not so easily destroyed. Newton’s mechanics, for example, was not rejected because it made incorrect predictions about the orbit of Mercury. See Lakatos’ leading paper at http://www.csun.edu/~vcsoc00i/classes/s497f09/s690s08/Lakatos.pdf ; see also the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy articles on Lakatos https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lakatos/ and Popper https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/, an dmy own exposition at https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2018/02/in-praise-of-fallibility-why-science-needs-philosophy-.html
To answer your question, consider the generally excellent correlation between each sequence established by stratigraphy throughout the nineteenth century, and radiometric dates. If there were no such correlation, we would have to reject current Old Earth science. There are, however, anomalies of two kinds. There are anomalies caused by overstrikes, which had been recognised stratigraphically by the 1880s. And there are anomalies related to post-depositional episodes, frequently and misguidedly quoted by Young Earth advocatesas refutations, when in fact they are sources of additional information. Consider, for example, the Cardenas Basalt in the Grand Canyon, where K/Ar dating with gentle heating gives an age reflecting post-depositional events, while strongly heating gives a true age in agreement with other methods (see https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-abstract/117/11-12/1573/125222/tectonic-inferences-from-the-ca-1255-1100-ma-unkar?redirectedFrom=fulltext or my own exposition at http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/03/antifragility-and-anomaly-why-science-works.html
Relatedly, the evolutionary account would be refuted if fossils occurred in the wrong order. They never do, although creationists often pretend that they do by confusing sister-space where is taught-species. Thus it matters little whether Archaeopteryx (which is not an ancestor of modern birds) occurred before or after other birds, but it would refute current thinking on the origin of birds if it had occurred before dinosaurs.
I hope this helps
LikeLiked by 2 people
Good for you Paul. Feeling a bit sheepish about your childish outburst. Of course, Paul, there are explanations and supposed answers for every problem. The question would be whether they truly do answer the questions, or are just mind satisfying solutions. This of course would go for both sides.
LikeLike
A long story, Paul. And the usual stuff. No new things here. You say:
“Relatedly, the evolutionary account would be refuted if fossils occurred in the wrong order.”
There are such observations, but then they are “explained” as overthrust, inversions. As I said, the theory cannot be falsified. So, it is not science.
Similarly, the Darwinian hypothesis (common descent with modifications) cannot be falsified. Think about it: All organic traits that are shared between species prove common descent and all unique traits prove modifications. So we are not dealing with science. We are dealing with a 19th century philosophy which should no longer be part of 21st century science, since it is not science.
LikeLike
Sources please on those alleged inversions regarding fossils, peer (or may we call you Peter?). And do any of those alleged out of sequence fossils pertain to anything in the reptile-mammal transition? Because, if not, that sequence is still something you have to account for. And how therapsid kinds were there, do you think? And where are they currently (the whole point of the Ark being to preserve the life). Are they smooshing with brachiosaurs somewhere in the wilds of Africa?
LikeLike
again peer, good for you. I’ve said much the same, but from a molecular biologists it sounds much “gooder” as science.c
LikeLike
excellent point. One apparently forgotten by some
LikeLike
Nice to know you keep your eyes on the current issue of Acts & Facts, but so do I. There were only 3 standard technical papers cited, Portenga & Bierman 2011 & two by Juergen Schieber. Tell us peer, did you consult those papers to see if they supported the spin Clarey was giving them? I have the three papers, please let us know where in any of them the authors contend the overall dating of any major deposit is in error, and by the degrees needed to comport to YEC dogmas.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe i can help, rj. Can you name one atheistic evolutionist that believes in creation? Your naive total trust in scientists, and their human nature, is remarkable. I believe it is called “faith”.
LikeLike
That’s an easy question: Simon Conway Morris, Francis Collins, Robert Bakker, Joshua Swamidass … they’re called theistic evolutionists, Chuck. Perhaps you should study their works sometime. Meanwhile, your deflection on the question I asked is duly noted. Flood Geology has specific model requirements, one of which involves how rock gets to be rock–not whether fine laminations can occur in muck a bit faster than had been thought (but not nearly fast enough to get Flood Geology off its very big hook).
btw bear true witness for us all, Chuck, have you thought to examine any of those technical papers in the secondary creationist source you waved at us? Do you Chuck fact check the claims being made at source level? It sounds like you don’t, and your evasion here is only adding to that perception.
LikeLike
Geez rj, you just don’t read the posts, do you. I asked you for an “atheistic evolutionist” who believes in creation, not theistic evolutionists. Understanding that, you might actually get my point.
LikeLike
Exactly the point. You want this debate to be about “atheism” and not the evidence. You belong to a minority that refuses on dogmatic theological reasons to accept any of the science you don’t like, and never offer source evidence for your claims (no matter how often urged to). You are not a reasonable person, Chuck. You carry no weight here. You’ve been unable to address the topic of Joel’s post, and can only troll on with side matters. You have refused to bear true witness regarding whether you do follow-up study with the primary sources. Discuss the evidence or shut up. Most theists accept evolution, because they understand the evidence. You repeat YEC tropes without anything to back your claims up. You get a #TortucanAlert.
LikeLike
The point, my dear rjdownward, is that the papers that you have in your possession have already gone through the Lyell-Darwin filter. Otherwise, you would not have them in your possession. The data often tell a different story, however, and can be easily interpreted in another way, more in accord with the YEC paradigm. Data on itself never tell anything, my dear rjdownward. Only in a paradigm they get meaning. I think you know that most science is data collecting and interpretation, don’t you? And how do you interpret data? Exactly: within your paradigm. Thanks.
As a molecular biologist and geneticist by education I know that evolution cannot explain what we observe in the genomes. All molbiols know this, but there is not alternative in the 19th century scientific (naturalistic) framework. There is also no room for information in this materialistic paradigm. In fact, the whole 19th century materialism is brough down and falsified by our current knowledge on the universe and biology: Information. The old fashioned Darwinian school will have to deny the information concept and that is what they indeed do. Poor old materialists. Better read something of Paul Davis, or Werner Gitt, or Wilder-Smith. The YECs (Prof Dr Gitt, Prof Dr Dr Dr Wilder-Smith) already understood this 40-50 yeara ago. It turns out (again) that Darwinism is a science stopper. Or as Huxley said: Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
LikeLike
Werner Gitt I’m aware of (hardly the most reliable source), but “Paul Davis”? Do you mean Paul Davies? Do link to some sources on “Paul Davis” so we may all see what you consider such impressive arguments from the one, if that is who you mean.
LikeLike
picture me applauding, tears steaming down my face. Finally, someone who understands “real” science.
LikeLike
Last night I went to a talk on Denialism. (A general talk focusing on the motivations, and changing methods of denialists, including how others had attempted to counter these, and what had resulted.) As it happened, none of the speaker’s specific examples were taken from evolution-denialism, nor was it referenced in the question and comment session afterwards, but I could Immediately apply much of what he talked about to posts and personalities on this site. Robert’s cheerful, indeed insouciant, rejection wholesale of any requirement to either know anything about the subject he pontificates on or to back up his outrageous and often self-contradictory assertions with any citation of primary sources, any actual data or indeed reasoned argument was, I realised, part of a wider pattern which the speaker called “post-denialism” (a la post-truth). But Peer’s writings are classic old-school denialism. That did/does not require consistency either, or indeed a regard for truth, but it does require the superficial appearance of these things. Indeed it professes to be engaged in a quest for truth, and to be engaged seriously in scientific enquiry. Old school denialists are quite tightly organised and have often set up their own institutions – “academic”, journalistic and even “research” or “think tank” – which mimic the appearance of ordinary academic and scientific institutions and journals and in which they can promote their cause while appearing to the general public to be engaged in genuine scientific research and discourse. The examples given in the talk were from climate change denialism and Holocaust denialism, but the ICR and AIG sprang to my mind at that point.
This has taken longer than I intended and I must stop now. I hope to get back to a more detailed analysis of the tactics in the specific post of Peer’s that I replied to later on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, it should, peer. But don’t dismay, scientists have come up with at least several explanations. It’s always a pleasure to see the scientific community at large get very creative when the consensus is threatened. Now if only any, maybe even one, was correct, not to mention scientific. But i am sure Joel will show you some of this creativity.
LikeLike
Let’s move past the snarking to the explaining stuff department,. Chuck. You don’t seem inspired to explain the creationist explanation (at source data level) to account for the data Joel brought up (possibly because no creationist can, because their model is wrong). So let’s give you an opportunity to show the utility & explanatory power of the Flood geology model by your describing the global Flood deposits where you live (there had to be some, since it was GLOBAL). I know there is no such deposits here where I live, in Spokane WA. And its not for lack of flood stuff, we got sloshed dozens of times by breaking ice dams over in Montana. But that’s the snag for the single Big Slosh model, that it DOESN’T account for the exact data we can see locally. So somehow the Big Slosh spigot got turned off in the Pacific Northwest. Let’s see if the same thing happened where you live, as you explore what’s under your own feet.
LikeLike
Reminder from my policies page: “Comments are welcome and I will do my best to respond to serious questions but will not engage in long polemic arguments. If you wish to have a pejorative-based debate with other users I will ask you to take it to another site. Comments that disparage others, are rude, and do not engage with the content in a meaningful way as I determine will result in their not being posted.”
LikeLike
what are the specific conditions or actions that gets one censored here. Is it objective? Does it apply to all sides? Or is partiality given. And joel, without long debates, your traffic here would suffer substantiality. For my own part, i know i have never used vulgarity towards anyone. Now if someone insinuates that someone else is ignorant, or “not real” in their beliefs, or suggests that someone slurp something gross, would that person be warned or banned? Would someone using ad hominem attacks or gross generalizations intended to demean anothers character or intelligence be subject to dismissal? Just wondering where the lines actually are and who they apply to, and whether this is just a bobblehead site. Await your fair and objective answer.
LikeLike
What do you suggest would be an objective set of criteria? Maybe those used by YEC sites:-)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Those criteria are plainly on display in their many works: decide what is allowed to be so based on the dogma, then scavenge whatever bits (especially extracted quote strings) that can be seen to fit it, ignore all the rest (including contrary content of their own cited sources), then depend on the peers & Chucks of the world to repeat the claims without ever fact checking them.
LikeLike
Hey Joel, rj is insulting me again. Time for censorship.
LikeLike
Oh you poor little snowflake. Chuck, if the Bad Methods sash fits (and it does) wear it, though not with pride (for its nothing to be proud of). I’ve been studying antievolutionism in detail for over twenty years, and can only report that which I have observed and documented. That you find my statement of that an insult falls flat insofar as what I have declared happens to be true. Have the balls to own it.
LikeLike
Joel my friend, what would you suggest as objective criteria? Maybe those used by pro-evolution sites? If you’ve paid any attention to my post, you know that i don’t believe there are any truly objective viewpoints, on anything, by anybody. We humans can’t be objective. It’s an impossibility. Sure, we can try, and perhaps succeed a bit, but no one, not one, comes to the table without an agenda, a viewpoint, a priori assumptions. That’s why exchanging facts accomplishes nothing. Have you EVER seen someone change their position as a result of an online post? I never have. That’s why, again, if you’ve paid attention, I don’t get into dozens of posts with facts and links and references. It doesn’t accomplish anything. We like what we like and ignore the rest. What i do object to is arrogance and demeaning people because, well, they’re just not as smart as I am. This is rampant in online blogs. Use the genetic fallacy, demean the intelligence of people, accuse them of not practicing “real” or “good” science. There is no attempt here to actually exchange viewpoints, just attempts at intellectual intimidation. Of course both sides can be guilty of this. That’s why “to resist is futile”.So there, that’s my point. If i actually encountered someone whom i really believed was the least bit open to questioning their own paradigm, I would joyfully engage. I’ve just never met one. I’ve read dozens of people posting on your site that demean others, and never once saw you intervene to moderate the conversation, never read one comment from you to correct these abuses by your fellow evolutionists. I guess you think it’s okay, maybe because yec and creationists are stupid and don’t deserve respect. And that’s what i object to. The one sided application of thought policing. Now you strike me as an intelligent person (even if you are an evolutionist, LOL) so i wonder if you are just blind to it, or it’s inconvenient. Whatever the reason, as long as it appears here, I’m going to challenge it. You want to block me, have at it. Maybe it’s just my weak, desperate, ignorant faith, but i am going to stand up for the oppressed and ridiculed. Those are my standards. Feel free to impose yours. And if you were to see my vast library, you would find hundreds of books written by those with whom i disagree. I love to challenge my beliefs. How else can you possibly grow. It’s just virtually impossible to find anyone with that same willingness.
LikeLike
Thank you, Chuck, for a long non-answer to the criteria question. I’m sure you feel so good standing up for those you hold to be “the oppressed and ridiculed” but those of us outside your doctrinal box may observe in great detail the actual methodology of creationism, which involves data parsing and data avoidance on a massive and indefensible scale, all in service of a poorly thought out dogmatic model that has never (and I contend can never) actually account for the data field. I don’t have to guess at this because I study at the source level thousands of antievolutionists and their many thousands of articles (YEC and ID both). Repeatedly you’ve been urged to ground your YEC claims in primary sources, and you have shied away from it. That puts you below the bottom feeding category, unwilling and/or unable to shine the light of methods on your own source usage.
Oppressed by the data your side can never address nor account for you appear to be, and “ridiculed” (with or without politeness) for that condition you will continue to be, so long as you manifest no accounting for the data field within your own vaguely articulated model, or show the slightest capacity to fact check the sources you do read.
To be blunt, Chuck, there is a madness to your method.
LikeLike
No rj, i fear the madness lieth within thyself. First of all, i have never claimed to be a yec. That would explain why you often appear to argue with yourself. Your opponent doesn’t actually exist. And while i am sure you are confident in your apparently superhuman abilities, i don’t for one second believe you when you claim to follow 90% of creationist literature, or thousands of antievolutionists. You know why? Don’t take it personal, but i don’t believe ANYBODY does such a thing. Unless you are a computer program and not really human. So, putting such self-aggrandizement aside, please note you have never answered any of my questions. Look at all the time wasted with ad hominem attacks. Why, wonder if we actually conversed and exchanged information. Even if we left out the personal degradations, there would hardly be time in the day, or night, to cover it all. And seeing as how i stated from the beginning that i would not waste seconds of my precious remaining life typing hundreds of posts with facts already dismissed a prior with minds completely closed to the possibility that they could believe something not true, then you understand why i don’t bother. And judging from your picture, you don’t look like a spring chicken yourself. Nothing more important to do?
LikeLike
Bad move on your part, Chuck, to challenge on the source level. My data field is on open display at my TIP website http://www.tortucan.wordpress.com. Anyone can see what sources I have in my kit bag by looking at the reference bibliographies (I must admit to being lax in getting the updated files out, book writing and all keeps many balls in the air, but what’s up reflects the bulk of the current set). You can print them up if you wish, though at several thousand pages I don’t recommend it unless you have a lot of scratch to spend on ink & paper. It’d recommend downloading the A-K & L-Z pdfs instead, more manageable.
As to where my field is at the moment, I have 5169 YEC sources in my reference metaanalysis spread sheet on my PC, authored by 1333 people. Another 1125 people were responsible for the 3972 ID & OEC citations in my data set, Of those, only 137 people have cited primary source papers, that’s around 6% of those 2458 antievolutionists tracked.
Now those 6% have cited 4538 primary source works, which is around 17% of my primary source field of 26,469 technical papers (all of these numbers climb weekly, as I keep busy at my TIP research), but that reflects a ceiling, not a floor, as many of the technical papers cited by the antievolutionists are obsolete or cited for authority quoting, while my 26K data field (along with another 9891 general science works) only reflects what I’ve bumped into so far, not a comprehensive map of all the relevant technical data works. So it’s a reasonable heuristic to say that antievolutionsists are glancing off only a more select 10% of the data field (in the case of the reptile-mammal transition, as readers of my ESD book, like Christine Janis, are aware, the number is way lower than that, ignoring virtually all of the substance there). Btw only some 20 antievolutionists have even tried to cover the RMT, putting them as less than 1% of the antievolution pundit bunch.
So, how much of the relevant literature (creationist and scientific) have you studied, Chuck, over those 45 years, and where might those curious to learn more see a listing of that, of the sort as I have made available here.
LikeLike
Gosh, this comment page has been very active over the past few days. It’s hard just to READ it all, let alone write considered replies to people who have referenced earlier posts of one’s own, or said things that one is eager to respond to.
And so many posts are nested deep within subthreads of subthreads, the page is beginning to resemble some cladistic diagram of the ancestry of various species.
LikeLike
Lol. Good one sally. Although i’ve often thought that cladistic diagram, if properly drawn with no artificial fillers, would resemble more of a tumbleweed.
LikeLike
You mean like this:
LikeLike
Well Tom to be honest, that resembles a snail, or a tornado dying out, or perhaps a top-heavy penguin. Appreciate it, though.
LikeLike
In what way do you “appreciate” the phylogeny chart presented to you, Chuck? Will it inspire you to dive into the taxa and search out the technical literature on which the chart was based? And attempt to account for all those data within your compressed YEC frame (you need to, you know, such as how come no one in the hypothesized Bible times spotted any therapsids, recently disembarked from the Ark, and wherever are their baramins now, a mere 4500 years on?). Or will this be just another of your rhetorical flip offs, of no more substance than the creationism you defend with such rhetorical firmness but devoid of supporting evidence.
LikeLike
Wow, rj, take a sedative. So, no one reported seeing any therapsids. Do you realize what a vacuous, juvenile non-point you made. So we have no videos? No written record. From a small population? You are aware, and this may be a shocker to you, that in the history of mankind, billions, trillions, even quadrillions of things have been said, seen, experienced without any record of them having occurred? This is one of the silliest things i have seen you write. And that alone is reason enough not to waste my time, or yours, debating with you. You are truly one of the most arrogant people i have even encountered on line. Just my own personal opinion, and a helpful suggestion. If you ever consider yourself an “evangelist” for the evolutionary cause, please don’t bother. I am trying to be helpful here. Your people skills are less than adequate. As if you care.
LikeLike
Another wordy non-response, Chuck. You’re true to creationist form here. But the therapsids did exist. The issue is whether you know diddly about them, & can explain why evolutionists have been so good at anticipating them, while creationists are capable only of ignoring them. As you’re doing now. Why is it that our embryonic jaw is laid out in the reptile manner (this has been known since the 1830s, more data suppressed by the creationists), and only in development shifts into the mammal mode, and that process is seen stage by stage in the therapsid fossils? Do dive into what happened in your own jaw regarding that articular-quadrate bunch.
Now as I’ve written a book on this (shameless plug alert), which surveyed the antievolutionist field on their coverage of it, I know just what little has been written by them on it, as well as what is available online of that, and what isn’t. So it will be fun to see, assuming you ever do try and tackle the RMT, which arrows you think to shoot back with. We’re all watching, Chuck. Popcorn is optional.
LikeLike
Oh I forgot, i appreciate the chart in it’s creativity. The older ones were a bit too obvious for those who paid attention. And contra you, dinosaur like creatures have been reported, painted, and described all the way back to our “cave” days. Of course, they might not have been evolutionists, or perhaps members of the primitive YEC, “Young evolutionists in caves”.
LikeLike
Tom B, you just posted a sort of tree of life with branching branches. Interestingly, not a single datapoint can objectively be check. Tell me, Tom, what convinced you this tree is real? We know from real biological science that this tree was an invention, or artifact if you wish, of the algorithms that were programmed to find this hypothetical (Darwinian) tree. The programmers themselves call this: garbage in, garbage out. My own studies show that there is no tree of life, but there are bushes and multiple origins. So, stop propagating this Darwinian propagande and show real data sets, which I can check for myself.
LikeLike
It was meant as a light hearted response to chuck’s suggestion that a cladistic diagram should look like tumbleweed. It is meant to be illustrative and has never been suggested as a reference (as best I can tell), so I am not sure what or why any biological science was done or needed to show it is an invention. And in fact the site I copied it from states quite clearly that the short branches have no basis (google “Leonard Eisenberg tree of life” if you feel the need to verify this).
As to why I suspect there is a tree of life, the following website is large but provides the most evidence I have found in one place. All of it is referenced and while I can not claim to have read all the source material (that pesky job thing) I have read more than a bit and have not found problems to date. Please let me know if you find some of the references problematic and which ones they are.
http://tolweb.org/Life_on_Earth/1
I have also found the evolutionary explanations more compelling. I have read your ideas on front loading and loss of information. While I would like to believe that harmful bacteria and viruses will soon reproduce themselves out of existence, if information loss is true, their reproductive rates would seem to have resulted in the loss of enough information by now to make them non viable. Instead, I regularly read about (and have to treat patients with) novel modes of resistance (unless antimicrobial resistance was part of the front loaded design…).
Those observations along with this:
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/10/4400
lead me to believe the -loss of information as the sole driver of evolution- idea has some hurdles to overcome.
(Or maybe onions are getting ready to display a really impressive array of new traits in the future.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you tom, for, i guess, understanding my post as a light-hearted response. Others, perhaps too slavishly interested in defending their viewpoint, didn’t seem to get that. And thank you for acknowledging that some of it “had no basis”, in effect, completed with speculative fillers. Now i certainly have not the slightest problem with educated guesses or speculation. My point was that they are often used. Just that. No proclamation of evil intent. Just an acknowledgement of reality. Certainly guesses or hypothesis should be allowed in any study of any kind. Some people just don’t think such things exist in science, theology, etc.
LikeLike
Tom B,
the point is Information. The cladistic trees do not and cannot per definition be based on unique species/clade specific genetic information. It is extactly this unique / clade specific information that falsifies common descent. Try to built trees with, for instance, the 130-plus unique human specific miRNA gene families recently elucidated to set us apart from the great apes. My friends in the field keep discovering such unique species / calde specific families of genetic information and we expect to find around 400-500 novel human specific miRNA families. Do they falsify evolutionary theory? No, because they are the modifications (the M) in the E(NS) = CD + M equation. Evolution (by Natural Selection) equals Common Descent plus Modifications. These modifications, which defy CD, should be scientifically explained as they present novel information. Are they the result of chance? Mutations plus selection? Unlikely.
If they would alreaydy be present in the non-coding DNA (but they are not), and can be recruited to function in novel human-specific networks, like the 200 million functional retroelement-like-switches we recently discovered in the genome (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30736359), we are dealing with a frontloaded genome, which is prepared to adapt and evolve, and bring forth human beings.
The frontloading evolution hypothesis is also in accord with the data presented in your PNAS paper. Darwinian theory is completely refuted by current molecular genetics. We know how the genome is built, we start to understand how it works, and we start to find that chance does not play a significant role, neither does selection, to built the information present in genomes. The cell/genome is an self-adapting, reproducing informationsystem. That it is the product of ID would be the right conclusion.
LikeLike
“The cladistic trees do not and cannot per definition be based on unique species/clade specific genetic information.”
That is true, because each species is unique, at least at any one point in time. Of course, things like ring species confuse the issue a little.
” It is extactly this unique / clade specific information that falsifies common descent. ”
Why, exactly? If species were not unique then we would be unable to distinguish them from other species. But the uniqueness of a species does not mean that they are not related to other species, nor that they do not share with them, at higher levels, features that define that higher level clade (genus, family, order, class, phylum, etc.). The 100 or so unique mutations that you yourself have may define you with respect to the genomes of your parents, but it does not mean that you are not related to them.
” Try to built trees with, for instance, the 130-plus unique human specific miRNA gene families recently elucidated to set us apart from the great apes.”
How about trying to build a clade of the family Muridae with the 200 or so Mus musculus specific miRNA genes? By your reasoning, we must conclude that mice are a separate creation from rats.
“Darwinian theory is completely refuted by current molecular genetics.”
Not according to the people who generate the data that you cite here. You may interpret these data to mean “frontloading”: other scientists do not.
LikeLiked by 3 people
“How about trying to build a clade of the family Muridae with the 200 or so Mus musculus specific miRNA genes? By your reasoning, we must conclude that mice are a separate creation from rats.”
Alternatively, they could have become independently lost in the lineages. In the original baranome of mouse and rats (if there was one), there was room for mouse and rats miRNAs. What you first must determine is essentiality of the unique (mi)RNA genes. Than you know whether you deal with an original baranome or with a baranome-derivative. Still mouse and rats could be the descenendants of two separate baranomes. Functional genetic studies will have to be done to determine this.
LikeLike
Alternatively, miRNAs unique to particular species have, as with other unique characteristics, no relevance to understanding the overall interrelationships in the tree of life.
LikeLike
“Alternatively, miRNAs unique to particular species have, as with other unique characteristics, no relevance to understanding the overall interrelationships in the tree of life.”
This, again, shows the subjectivity of the pseudoscience called evolution. Who is going to determine what genes or characteristics are going to be included to determine relatedness? The evolutionary community would be my guess? Those who believe in evolution are going to tell us, unbiased scientists looking for truth, that we can only include those genes that are in accord with the evolutionary model. This is where we have arrived at anno 2019…subjectivity and belief. Mol biol has beyond any doubt demonstrated that shared traits, which were interpreted as evidence for common descent, are built by independent, non-related genetic systems. Günther Wagner wrote extensively on this topic if you do not want to read my book. As a matter of fact, I wrote my Darwin critical book and my novel evolutionary hypothesis to bring all christians together, so we can stand up to the tide that is coming. What happened? I was expelled and excluded by the evotheists. Ask yourselves…what is so great about Darwins pseudoscience? And than tell me.
LikeLike
“Not according to the people who generate the data that you cite here. You may interpret these data to mean “frontloading”: other scientists do not.”
Interestingly, I am one of the authors (P. Borger). No where in the article we speak of Darwinian evolution…we sepak of RE-driven evolution. This is frontloading evolution, since all regulatory genetic elements that drive network evolution are already in the genome.
There is a paradigm shift coming, my dear darwinian friends, in which there is hardly any room left for the Darwinian philosophy.
LikeLike
Thank you very much for identifying yourself as one of the authors, Pieter, That puts you in that select category of antievolutionists published in regular science works. Do your coauthors agree with your interpretations of the work, Pieter? Have you discussed that with them, especially the young earth Noah’s Ark & Eden aspects? I for one should be most interested in their reactions to that, if you have.
LikeLike
“That puts you in that select category of antievolutionists published in regular science works.”
Here is another one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29231847
We are on the move. We move slowly but we will replace the Darwinian fallacy.
LikeLike
What this paper shows is that the genetic underpinnings of phenotypic form are more complicated than we thought in the last millenium. Science advances all the time, and our understanding changes. However, natural knockout genes do no more to disprove common descent than did the discovery of Mendel’s laws of heredity. Of course, at the time, people claimed that this new understanding of inheritance did indeed disprove Darwin. This too shall pass.
LikeLike
Thank you on that piece, too, Pieter. Adding that to my data field. We’ll see how well your opinion in that fares in the rough and tumble of science, but perhaps the whole body of the field is not quite so trending in your direction as you hold it to be. Regarding the Clark 2007 paper on Arabidopsis genomics you cited (ref 15) as showing “almost every tenth gene was so defective that it would not fulfill its normal function anymore,” on what page please do you assert that conclusion was being presented?
LikeLike
“Why, exactly?”
If novel genetic information, or novel biological structures do not falsify common descent (CD), what can? If nothing can falsify CD, we are not dealing with science. MY point is that novel information, in the form of novel miRNA families in humans falsifies common descent with apes.
“If species were not unique then we would be unable to distinguish them from other species. But the uniqueness of a species does not mean that they are not related to other species, nor that they do not share with them, at higher levels, features that define that higher level clade (genus, family, order, class, phylum, etc.).”
Of course they are related….but not by common descent, because the novel information falsifies common descent. They are the modification (M) in the E(NS) = CM + M. As a whole the Darwinian Evolution (E) by naturals election (NS) cannot be falsified and thus does not qualify as science. It is an unfalsfiable pseudoscientific concept which is always and everywhere true.
“The 100 or so unique mutations that you yourself have may define you with respect to the genomes of your parents, but it does not mean that you are not related to them.”
You are talking about pontmutations. There are many more regulatory changes in my genome, thousands, millions. This is the result of of TEs, or as I prefer to call them: VIGEs (Variation-Inducing Genetic Elements).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmm, I have no idea why this site recorded that I ‘liked’ this (probably something to do with my apparently being kidnapped by WordPress and made to sign in every time I attempt to post something). But, to repeat: every new taxon has new genetic information, just as every new individual has new genetic information. How could evolution happen if it were not otherwise? But those new genes/morphology will be inherited by the descendants of that taxon/individual.
It appears that you are looking at the current period of time as if it was some sort of ultimate reference point. It is not — today is just another point in time like any other, whether yesterday, last week, last year, last millenium, or some time in the mid Miocene (where my heart resides). New taxa have new features — those new features are inherited by their descendants (if they have any). That is the only way that we can trace a phylogenetic history of taxa. If new taxa did not have new characters, either genetic or morphological, then phylogenetics would not work.
“Of course they are related….but not by common descent, ”
How can anything be related to anything else by any other means?
“As a whole the Darwinian Evolution (E) by naturals election (NS) cannot be falsified and thus does not qualify as science. ”
Fine. It’s a hypothesis of mechanism. Unrelated to the observable evidence for common descent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“We” discovered that? As in you being one of the coauthors of the Nikitin paper, Peter? That aside, thank you for presenting yet more pro-evolution science work, done by all those scientists actually doing the work, I’ll add that to my TIP data field. “We” also await (not with breath held) your paleogenomic monograph specifying which of these retroelements (as well as everything else in our genome, including all those ALUs) you contend were in Adam & Eve’s (or Noah & the kids’) genomes only 6000 and 4500 years ago respectively. Its the implicit presumption of your comment, Peter. By all means make good on that.
LikeLike
I’m sure you’re aware, Christine, how few creationists engage in genetics with any pretense to professional expertise (Sanford, Jeanson, Tomkins, Carter, with some peripherals among the IDers, Gauger & Axe) and how uninformative their efforts have been to date, not impressing everybody else in the non-antievo genetics field (although a gold mine of methods lessons, as one examines how they parse their data field or deck stack their arguments published in their house journals). As has been noted, the situation is even more pathetic when it comes to the contribution of antievolutionary paleontologists, where they are so few and unproductive as to a hardly warrant an asterisk. To the extent that their models are inherently wrong to begin with, this is rather all one can expect from that quarter.
LikeLike
Peer, reading the linked article and its abbreviations helped remind me of why I prefer printed as opposed to electronic articles, so thank you for that.
I noted, and you state, you were an author so I assume you know the comparisons the article was making was to
“REs with an average divergence less than 8% were considered as evolutionary younger fraction, concerning the evolution of human lineage since its divergence from New World monkeys [47]. Another group contained all REs and roughly reflected genome shaping by REs since the origin of major eutherian clades [47].“
(The RE being retroelements which I assume are the same as the TE or transposable elements to which you often refer).
So the split from New World Monkeys and the origin of major eutherian clades are the break points used for comparison in your article but then I see that you are using micro RNA data (which was part of the younger fraction which split from New World Monkeys) to now say there is no relation to apes at all. Are you now stating the analysis in your article was based of false comparisons?
Please clarify.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Peer, I am also not clear as to why you choose to myopically focus on micro RNAs. Can you explain why differences in miRNA should be used exclusively and the other 99% of the functional genome ignored?
You also need to explain the myriad of genetic disorders humans suffer with. Are those also part of frontloading? When a genetic disorder is found, we routinely evaluate both parents and the vast majority of disorders are not found in either parent. Deletions, duplications, translocations, and insertions should all be included. And you probably should explain why genes for cystic fibrosis and sickle cell disease (since Hgb C is a superior in all ways and causes no disease) would be included by a front loader.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Question for peer, do front loading and/or -loss of information as sole driver of evolution- make any predictions about what will be found in ancient DNA?
I ask because I would find your ideas much more compelling if someone, based on front loading and/or only loss of information, predicted and then confirmed their prediction in a modern vs. an ancient horse genome for example: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12323
If it has been done, some guidance as to where to find it or a link would be appreciated.
And if not, I am curious why not? It seems an obvious experiment so I am curious about what I am missing.
LikeLike
aHHHH< a breath of fresh air. Someone with sincere questions seeking real answers. Someone who even asks questions with insulting someone. Now don’t worry, everyone, i am not assuming Tom is “on my side” but just appreciating something found so seldom on sites, that’s all.
LikeLike
It’s a very good question, and we can all observe your not answering it Chuck. But then, if you actually have no workable creationist model, that’s understandable. Meanwhile paleogenomics actively applies evolutionary models, and successfully so, retroengineering ancient biomolecules and processes. The unproductive nothing that is creationism has never been in starker contrast to the actual science.
LikeLike
rj. The question was for you, imbecile. Do I have to do the thinking for both of us?
LikeLike
Explain the redeeming value in this comment. I won’t post the rest of your similar comments until you can provide a good reason why calling someone an imbecile should deserve to be posted.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No good reason Joel. Just like there’s no good reasons for rj’s comments, but he’s your buddy, your comrade in arms. Are you actually trying to tell me there’s nothing offensive in rj’s posts, half of which are pejorative statements and insults. I knew you wouldn’t be fair in moderation, and you haven’t been. You never intended to. Just wanted you to see it for yourself. It’s called hypocrisy joel, try to hide it behind science all you want. If that’s what gives you peace and contentment, go for it. This site has been filled with such things for years, but i imagine you have that same sense of smug superiority that the others do. That’s why i don’t bother debating facts. There’s not an ounce of fairness on this site.Not a single ounce. Just back slapping and bobblehead thoughts. I hope you are proud. Wait, you already are.
LikeLike
I asked for a good reason for calling someone an imbecile or I would not be able to post any of your comments and your response was “no good reason.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
nice cover joel. Is this for christine? A reason not to post my post to her? And you didn’t answer my question. Why do you allow others, here specifically rj, to post the most ridiculing posts i think i’ve have ever seen on the net. Your pretense at some sort of fairness and objectivity may fool no one but yourself. And why you pretend at this game when you will just do what you want to do is only to cover your own hypocrisy and partiality. I care not what you post. That you don’t only confirms what i suspect and am convinced of, and it will, for a bit, give you cover and some sort of feeling of control and superiority. What you won’t be able to do, forever, at least, is ignore the import of what i am saying. My field of expertise? Human psychology. Oh yes, i know all the games All the methods. I know that people can deny. deny. deny. All the while the truth eats away. And when it finally breaks through, after the embarrassment has passed, the greatest regret is the inability to reach back and change the past, to take back those moments and decisions that seemed so right, so pleasing, but like a cancer they eat away at one till the day they die. You are but one example, Joel, but a good one. You pretend at science while satisfying this personal grudge against Ken Ham, just a fly in the ointment, really. But you force all that you dislike about God, creationists, YEC into this one man, And by “proving” him wrong, you avoid all the really important questions you need to ask about yourself, avoiding that day of reckoning. It’s an obsession, really, and a dangerous one. A life consuming one. But you are not alone. Not by a long shot. Your personality is found in all walks of life, all belief systems.You exercise this tiny bit of power, just enough, you think, to give you some kind of immunity. And unless you are a true psychopath (which i don’t think you are), this takes a toll on you, like an addiction when the high wears off. RJ is another. Birds of a feather. That’s why you protect him. You can’t confront him. It would be like one addict doing an intervention on another.
So no, Joel, no good reason. But all games end eventually. That it won’t is the lie we tell ourselves to enable our disease. But it will end. And though you might not believe it, it might just be the truth that one day you, I, everyone, will have to give account for every single word, thought, and action. Just think about that possibility. Think about it. I know I do. It’s not a comforting thought, especially considering that it’s human nature to think far more highly of ourselves than we should. And if we are all asked the question “what good reason did you have for all the wrongs committed” and we realize we are confronting a being that can’t be lied to, knows all things, ALL things, perhaps in that moment of clarity we will finally speak the truth. No. Good. Reason. Take care, Joel.
LikeLike
Thanks for your concern. I’m prepared for that moment. Take care. Joel
LikeLiked by 1 person
Notice furthermore that what I was commenting on was this:
“Question for peer, do front loading and/or -loss of information as sole driver of evolution- make any predictions about what will be found in ancient DNA?
I ask because I would find your ideas much more compelling if someone, based on front loading and/or only loss of information, predicted and then confirmed their prediction in a modern vs. an ancient horse genome for example: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12323
If it has been done, some guidance as to where to find it or a link would be appreciated.
And if not, I am curious why not? It seems an obvious experiment so I am curious about what I am missing.”
Peer didn’t reply, and of course neither did wheel-spinner Chuck. To be called an “imbecile” by the likes of Chuck is a high honor, Joel, an affirmation that one is on the right track. Also, Christine Janis apprised me just today of another of your posts (to which she and Chuck were a comments part) from 2016 on the hyperspeciation matter (The Great Genetic Bottleneck that Contradicts Ken Ham’s Radical Accelerated Diversification (Post-Flood Hyper-Evolution), that and some of the links there are relevant to the Flood Geology hyper-speciation issue in a chapter of the new Rocks book, so thanks all around for the heads-up.)
LikeLike
“do front loading and/or -loss of information as sole driver of evolution- make any predictions about what will be found in ancient DNA?”
The predictions have been done in my book of 2008 (https://www.amazon.de/Darwin-Revisited-understand-biology-century/dp/6202315113).
To give two examples: antibiotic resistance to modern antibiotics should be present in permafrost bacteria. Another example: genetic redundancy should be more explicit in ancient genomes. Both have now been found true. Read my book and you know that there is now a working genetic frontloading creation-science model superior to the current evolutionary model. Frontloading implies a young biology, since frontloaded genetic elements cannot be stabilized by natural selection. All the facts point is this direction.
LikeLike
It’s interesting to consider the notion that the creator “frontloaded” bacteria with resistance to antibiotics that humans would later develop. Just to make sure that humans continued to be punished for The Fall, I suppose, by stymying their ability to cure diseases.
A more simple answer for this observation is that there are many natural antibiotic products in nature, mostly manufactured by plants. Antibiotics are not simply a human invention, and there are only so many different types that humans can discover and use via technology.
LikeLiked by 2 people
To which, of course, one might add the fact that bacterial populations, which are huge, will be mutating all the time, and that some of these mutations will happen to convey resistance to this or that antibiotic, by tweaking this or that metabolic pathway.
However, such pre-adaptation (to use an old-fashioned term) must be unusual among the ways in which bacteria develop resistances, since we know from bitter experience. We know from bitter experience that resistance emerges after exposure. We have known (since, I think,, Luria) that this resistance must have already been present among rare individuals in some population exposed to the antibiotic.
We also happen to know, thanks to Lenski and others, a great deal about how mutations arise all the time in bacteria. I am not aware of any phenomenon explained by the front-loading argument that could not be as well explained by what we know about random mutation in bacteria, followed by selection.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Lenski….and his experiment show devolution. His variability (mutation) was predominatly determined by Tranpsosns (IS elements). Point mutations were scarce.
I discussed his findings already in 2009, in my book. There is a net loss of genetic information, which was to be expected. Organisms cannot become more complex in steady state environments. That is conventional evo-wisdom, which everbody posting here should have at least as rudimentary knowledge on evolutionism. So, what did Lenski show…the edge of evolution! 12 cultures of 100 ml bacteria (= 1.200 billion organisms), 5 cultures per week (= 260 per year). After 20 years he had 20 x 260 x 1.2 x 10^12 = 6.2 x 10^18 experimental trials and only one reshuffeld gene that could use citrate in an aerobic environment. This is the edge of evolution and proves we are not the product of random chance. Compare this to humans in the steady state of the African plains….they need at least 130 novel miRNA gene families…Darwin R.I.P. How evolution could work is penned in my book Darwin Revisited.
LikeLike
“Compare this to humans in the steady state of the African plains….they need at least 130 novel miRNA gene families…Darwin R.I.P.”
What ‘steady state’ on the African plains? Human evolution has been characterized and determined by Plio-Pleistocene climatic variability.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092611-145754
Note that mice have as many novel miRNAs in comparison to rats as humans have in comparison to other great apes. This alone leads me to suspect that there may not be that much significance to those figures.
“How evolution could work is penned in my book Darwin Revisited.”
Now, here’s something that I’ve been wondering about. We all laugh at Ray Comfort with his claims of the evolution of the first male dog (from a rock), and how long did he have to wait until the first female dog evolved — because we know that genetic change is something that happens in populations. Sure, mutations happen in individuals, but they then have to become fixed in populations in order for them to be sustained, and for any type of overall genetic change in the species (whether or not that leads to speciation).
But your claim, if I remember rightly from your posts on other threads, is that genetic change leading to the emergence of new taxa (within a baronome) is something that happens rapidly, with a sudden rearrangement of genetic material (I believe that ‘chromothripsis’ was one of your terms). But that is something that has to happen to an individual, not to a population. So, now Comfort’s question has some validity. After the first dog emerged from a rapid and transformative genetic rearrangement, how long did it have to wait for another of the opposite sex to have the identical change? Apologies if I am misremembering your description of how new taxa originate.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks yet again for your patience in clarifying the issues, and for an informative link
LikeLike
After a mere 20 years of experiments with bacteria in a single lab Lenski, simply by manipulating their environmental conditions, had managed to induce a culture of a species of bacteria that had not previously been able to use citrate in an aerobic environment to evolve to do just that, and to pass on the ability to subsequent generations. Peer’s response is that this was devolution not evolution, because, he says, it involved a loss of genetic information. What’s that got to do with it? Genetic information is being gained and lost all the time, and most of it is nonfunctional at any given point in any given organism. What counts for evolution is if a change, either “loss” or “gain”, has some effect useful in the organism ‘s current environment. Clearly this was the case for that culture of eColi which gained the ability to access a food source denied to counterparts which did not possess that mutation.Peer also is less than impressed that this result was achieved by only one reshuffled gene.But one reshuffled gene was all that was needed in order for the bacteria to achieve that particular useful result. It stands to reason that this would be the evolutionary pathway most likely to be taken, rather than one involving a more complicated sequence of mutations.
Now, if Lenski had had the whole worldwide population of eColi bacteria to experiment with, and a time scale of a few thousand years, no doubt he could have engineered a number of other evolutionary changes, some of them involving more major, or several step mutations. But as it was, seems to me that your criticisms are misplaced.
LikeLike
More than that. See Lenski’s own admirable blog, specifically https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/evolution-goes-viral-and-how-real-science-works/ ; I quote:
To make a long story short, after just 8 days, one of six lambda populations evolved the ability to infect malT-mutated cells by attaching to a different surface protein … He found that all 24 with the new capability had at least 4 mutations; these included 2 changes that were identical in all 24 lines, a third that further mutated one of the same codons (sets of 3 DNA bases that specify a particular amino acid to be incorporated into a protein), and another mutation that was always within a span of 11 codons. … Remember, too, that nothing is broken. These viruses can now use both the original LamB receptor and the alternative OmpF receptor.
Direct observation at the molecular level of the development of a novel ability, without damage to existing abilities, or appeal to front-loaded specific precursors.
And, incidentally, yet another demonstration of evolution as an experimental science
LikeLiked by 1 person
Have you any response, Peer, to Paul’s comeback to you on the Lenski bacteria subject?It would seem to me that your earlier post on this has been shown to be factually incorrect in several ways, but maybe you would like to challenge Lenski’s statements, or alternatively to retract those earlier assertions of yours.
LikeLike
That gaseous vertebrate (as Haeckel once snarked about God) apparently also had a soft spot for parasitical nematodes, along with a wanton predilection for littering the fossil record with critters guaranteed to make evolutionists happy, such as those from your own field of specialty, those dual-jawed therapsids that fit Robert’s Broom 1912 prediction like a glove. Funny old codger, what a scamp that Designer was (shame he couldn’t have banned slavery, though, or put a nix on that pernicious witch killing command).
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Front loading implies a young biology, since front loaded genetic elements cannot be stabilised by natural selection.” Yes, indeed, a point made by Sean B. Carroll in “The Making of the Fittest.”, which I was rereading recently. Any such front loaded elements would be very liable to corruption during the time of their non use.
Which, since the geological and chemical and fossil evidence very strongly indicates an OLD biology, is good reason for supposing that front loading is a nonstarter as an explanation for what we see in human genomes.
LikeLike
“since the geological and chemical and fossil evidence very strongly indicates an OLD biology”
Biology as we know it can only be young. Why? Because of genetic redundancy and obligate sexual reproducuing organisms. Read my online article, then you will understand:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29231847
LikeLike
Dunno what your idea of “old” or “young” is when applied to biology, Peter. The mainstream idea is that biological organisms have been around on earth for at least the last three and a half billion years, which seems pretty old to me. Now certainly for most of that time biology was not as we know it in the sense that many of the current species now present did not exist (including Homo sapiens, of course) while many of the life forms then existing have neither survived in anything like their then forms nor left any living descendants at all, however different in appearance or habits. If you go back far enough there were no vertebrates, and if you go back further still no multicellular life, only single called organisms. But somehow I don’t think that’s what you meant. And if you meant that YOU think that you have proof from genetics that sexually reproducing organisms have only existed for a few thousand years then I think you’ve got your work cut out persuading any scientist not already squarely committed to YEC on religious grounds to agree with you. Or any non scientist such as me either, come to that, provided that they’ve read a bit of stuff written for the general reader by evo devo scientists.
LikeLike
Did you ever actually in this Comments section specify how long you think sexually reproducing organisms have existed, Peer? Or indeed any organisms? Are you basically a Bishop Ussher-dating adherent of 6,000 ( or 10,000) years for the age of the Earth?
I ask because, as I indicated before, terms like “young” and “old” when applied to biology are so vague as to be pretty meaningless. Two people might be envisioning the same period of time, one calling it long and the other short. Whereas if you were to specify precisely how long ago, for instance, you thought the first ancestor of all the vertebrates was created and front loaded with all the genetic information its descendants were ever going to need, we would all know exactly what you meant. Or if you think there were more than one vertebrate baramin created and frontloaded, when this happened and what they were.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a very good core methods question, on the conceptual Map of Time (without which a lot of muddle can ensue). Now we’ll see if Pieter will honestly and plainly answer it.
LikeLike
From your Nature link on the genetics of horses. There is a very interesting observation, which I also predicted in my book of 2008, that genetic variablity is genereated intrinsically and does not require long ages, because it is an intrinsic property of the genome. Your Nature link reads:
“We find similar levels of genetic variation among Przewalski’s and domestic populations, indicating that the former are genetically viable and worthy of conservation efforts.”
Remember that Przewalski horses went through a very severe bottleneck about 100 years ago, this is an great surprize. Genetic variability in both “species” is similar is expected from my frontloaded evolution hypothesis. Details can be found in my book:
LikeLike
Przewalski horses are the same species as the domestic horse. Not a lot of evolutionary implications in this observation.
LikeLike
I am not making the connection between front loading and intrinsic genetic variability.
And I did note your conflation of my questions about bacteria and ancient horse genomes. Apparently I was not explicit so that is on me, I will not make that mistake again in the future.
LikeLike
good for you peer. Kind of my exact point but without my sardonic humor
LikeLike
FYI I’ve turned “moderation” back on which means that I have to look at each comment and approve before being posted. Previously anything written was just posted immediately. As a result there could be delays in seeing your comments show publicly since there are times that I am unavailable for approving them for several hours.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s fine. And fair. If applied with impartiality.
LikeLike
Chuck, would you care to share with us what kind of “artificial fillers” are habitually applied to cladograms?
LikeLike
Surely this is a naive statement. Your right, Christine, all cladograms are complete and accurate, indicated all the many many transitional have been discovered, verified, and in consensus with the scientific community as a whole. What in the world was I thinking? How could i question? Christine, one thing i do know from 45 years of research is that if i have to answer your question then you, my lady, got some more readin’ to do. And i love the continuous demands for source material when, if contrary to the paradigm, they will be either ignored or the old genetic fallacy will be employed. So why ask for something you don’t even believe exists? As a well known atheistic answered the question “What evidence would convince you that God exists?” he replied, “Nothing”. There, a beautiful example of philosophical thinking. A paradigm that cannot be challenged, against which no contrary evidence is even considered possible. I enjoy comfort as much as the next person, but when does it become a trap, a mental prison?
LikeLike
Gee, 45 years at it, Chuck, and still no monograph from you … or answer to Janis’ question, either. But then applying your rhetorical fluff to data field would require that you’d actually read any of it, and so far little evidence of that has been on display here. How are you coming working out how many therapsid baramins there were (or did any of them qualify as monobaramins)? Apply your creationism to the data, Chuck. We’re all watching,
LikeLike
“Your right, Christine, all cladograms are complete and accurate, indicated all the many many transitional have been discovered, verified, and in consensus with the scientific community as a whole.”
A cladogram is merely a hypothesis of relationships among a set of included taxa, subject to change with the addition of new information. I’m not sure how any cladogram can be ‘complete’, nor even what this term means in this context. And, unless specific information is included about a transitional form, it will not somehow be indicated on any cladogram (as an “artificial filler” or otherwise).
However, I note that, rather than discuss the pros and cons of phylogenetic methodologies, you would rather turn the subject to the issue of atheism.
LikeLiked by 2 people
You’ve spotted the core concern for YECers, Christine, their Kulturkampf obsessions on “atheism” (which would include all the science their 1960s retread dogmas insist cannot be true, though even they evolve, as modern YEC is lurching into plate tectonics and hyper-speciation processes–not a pretty sight, but funny to watch). You may have noticed how quickly and consistently both Peter and Chuck have veered from even trying to document their (exceedingly vague) positions, and how the point of Joel’s post, or the systematics that you remind them of, are far from their #TortucanAlert mind shells.
Given that neither is likely to operate above the groundling bottom feeder mode, an attempt to present a baraminological challenge to standard systematics is unlikely to be in either of their working mental toolkits.
LikeLike
I would like to turn the subject away from atheism and back to phylogenetics.
Peer said earlier: “My own studies show that there is no tree of life, but there are bushes and multiple origins. ” Peer, like most YECs, accepts that there are associations of related taxa at the level of the family (or thereabouts), but those baronomic units are independent entities, with separate creation origins.
My question thus is this: both genomic and morphological data would group all canids into one family, Canidae, and all felids into another family, Felidae. Peer is apparently in agreement with this (indeed, he told us in a post a few months ago that the only difference between canid species was allelic, although he appears to have been conflating breeds of domestic dog with genera of canids). Genomic and morphological data would also group Canidae and Felidae (plus some other families) together into a larger grouping, the order Carnivora, to the exclusion of other mammals, other vertebrates, other metazoans, etc.
But Peer’s studies would, apparently, refute this expectation of the Darwin-Lyell paradigm and show that canids and felids had no attributes in common that would link them together to the exclusion of any other groupings of organisms: mammalian, vertebrate, invertebrate, plant, or even bacterial. I would be interested in knowing what data Peer has to present to support this view. I’m sure it’s somewhere in his book, but perhaps he could summarise it here for us.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“indeed, he told us in a post a few months ago that the only difference between canid species was allelic, although he appears to have been conflating breeds of domestic dog with genera of canids)”
This is not entirely true. I said, that the difference would be regulatory and related to the chromosomes, karyotypes, and TEs…. The extended Neil Todd hypothesis. I also said that chance and natural selection do not play a role of significance.
Whether or not Canidae and Feliday are derived from the same baranome can only be determined in (functional) genetic studies. Have they been performed? As Far as I know, they have not.
To discriminate between baranomes, we would have to establish a set of what I call “indicator genes”, with which I mean genetic sequences which are essential and unique two one of the baranomes. In 2008, I indicated miRNAs are potential indicator genes.
LikeLike
All vertebrates can be distinguished from other organisms by 41 unique miRNAs. Does that mean that vertebrates are a single baranome?
https://www.pnas.org/content/105/8/2946.short
Also, canid genera can indeed be distinguished by novel genes
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44772-5
LikeLiked by 3 people
I had the PNAS paper in my TIP reference field, but not that new Scientific Reports one, thanks for that info :) More data against which to measure the antievolution analyses.
LikeLike
“All vertebrates can be distinguished from other organisms by 41 unique miRNAs. Does that mean that vertebrates are a single baranome?”
In the more general approach of the frontloaded evo-theory the vertebrates could be all derived from one single baranome. In the special frontloaded theory, you need more criteria to be fullfilled, such as essentiality of the indicator genes. This can be deteremined in functional genetic studies: make 41 knockouts and check for essentiality. (Remove them all and you have an invertebrate…a worm? Then add them back one by one and select for vertebrae…Darwinism is beautiful…)
LikeLike
‘In the more general approach of the frontloaded evo-theory the vertebrates could be all derived from one single baranome. ‘
Really? So where would humans fit into this baranome if they are unrelated to the great apes? Or are humans not vertebrates?
Perhaps this phylogeny is preferable
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1096-0031.1999.tb00397.x
‘(Remove them all and you have an invertebrate…a worm?)’
Apart from the overly-simplistic notion that by knocking out those genes you’d be left with the vertebrate common ancestral form, the organism that you might arrive at would be one within the same phylum that contains the vertebrates: a lancelet (Amphioxus).
LikeLiked by 1 person
RJ, Sally, Christine, Tom, Paul and others. When Chuck first appeared on this post he began by asking me a question: “….Don’t you have something better to do? What actually are you accomplishing? Do you have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ? Do you think all this effort will in any wise improve mankind’s future? Are you spending so much time in the past that you’ve made no preparation for eternity? Better move on to the important stuff, Ruminating about fossils is probably not going to be much of a relief from darkness, loneliness, and regret. Got any Good News?”
Do I have something better to do? The blog isn’t my highest priority by any means. I’ve written very little in the past couple of months. But obviously it is important to me and my friends and church understand. The blog leads to many personal conversations about faith and science and allows me to direct questions to things I’ve written.
Now, I will say that I do know that some things are not worth spending time on and will not lead to any accomplishments: one of those would be responding to Chuck. I truly do have much better things to do. As we have witnessed, Chuck will respond to any response with three more questions and insults. Having witnessed this behavior before, I have learned. It would be foolish not to have learned from the past. Proverbs tells us, Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. I’ve learned from the past. If I see a person seek to engage in meaningful and respectful dialogue I will engage as I am able.
I suggest that all of you take Chucks admonishment. You do have better things to do with your time than to engage in conversation with him. He is simply using up time that certainly could be more effectively spent. I’m happy to have Chuck have his chance to have his say about a post. It will be public so others can see it and decide for themselves if it has merit. Make you point but once one party is not listening let it go and let the reader be the judge of your words merits.
Lastly, and most concerning to me. I’ve not seen any “Good News” in his posts. In fact, I’ve seen no fruits of the Spirit on display at all. That being the only evidence I have about who Chuck is, I can’t conclude that Chuck has much concern for the Good News which I pray for him is not the case. The only thing that would be worth effort with Chuck does concern his soul and to that I am willing to engage in conversation privately should he so desire.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Ah, the forever aroma of moral and intellectual snobbery. We will meet again some day, Joel. And for your sake, I hope you have the right answers for all the right questions. You really don’t see your ego, your self-protecting insulation, do you? Or do you? I actually will pray for you Joel, that the self inflicted darkness you dwell in will be removed. Of course, you don’t think that’s true, do you. That’s why deception works so well. The deceived don’t know they are. Nor, rarely, do they want to know. They are very comfortable right where they are. And you know quite well i am accurate in my descriptions of this site. Somewhere, maybe deep inside, you know. I encourage you, if you do have even the slightest inkling of it, to fight it, lay aside your ego, and cry out for relief. I sincerely hope you do. I would hate for these words to haunt you in the future. No, i’m not talking about evolution. I am talking about your soul. I could give a crap about evolution. It’s empty, has no meaning, nor can it give any. If you think your life, all life, is just a meaningless random, goop originating accident, I can’t imagine what you have to make up to give yourself hope, to believe there’s the slightest reason for you being here. I can’t imagine the misery, the hopelessness, the constant search for a reason, any reason. Sure, you can fill the time with meaningless, purposeless exercises, but what, really, do they accomplish? You’re just killing time. And on this site, killing thought. A strange thing for someone who seems to love science so much. But i don’t think you realize the truth, You don’t love science. You love a paradigm. It’s your opiate. And you protect you fellow users. You even enable them, and encourage their addiction. In that you are culpable. Like it or not, Joel, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess. Even yours. It’s your destiny.
LikeLike
Unfortunately, exactly as expected.
LikeLiked by 3 people
You are absolutely right. When I am addressed directly I find it difficult not to respond, for reasons of personal honour and in case my silence is construed as not have an answer, but in cases like this, responding merely encourages more of the same.
I have a rule on my own blog, which I think I’ve mentioned before, that I allow creationists a maximum of two comments on a post unless (as did once happen) I judge that they are adding something of value to the conversation.
You might consider something similar. Once a thread gets thoroughly contaminated by the likes of Chuck, people will stop following it, thereby wasting valuable comments by other people, and risking damage to the site
LikeLiked by 4 people
I have just got back from attending an interesting talk on Denialism, wherein every now and then I was quite strongly reminded of certain people on this site and their ways of proceeding. Yes, anyone who attempts to persuade Chuck (or indeed Robert or Peer) that YECreationism has got it wrong is surely doomed to failure. They are too invested in their narrative.
However, thanks to Paul linking to sites treating of the dinosaur soft tissue controversy I discovered something that gave me renewed hope that not all YECS are as unpersuadable, if they are still young, and intelligent and interested in science and really concerned to pursue the truth wherever it lies. Mary Schweitzer was once a YEC, and took a class in palaeontology hoping to be able to prove that the teacher had it all wrong. Instead, she realised that the scientists had good scientific reason for their opinions on the age of the earth, She is still very much an evangelical Christian, but is now an Old Earth evolutionist.
LikeLike
Thank you Joel for your article, which is well written and well illustrated. And it has generated lots of comments. I am a creationist geologist, and I would like to make a couple of comments if that is OK.
First, this is a worldview issue. That is, evolutionists and uniformitarians work with two different interpretive belief systems. Consequently, it does not achieve anything by saying, “The uniformitarian position is wrong because of xxxx.” Whenever uniformitarians find evidence that contradicts the uniformitarian principle they never say, “Uniformitarianism must be wrong because of xxxx.” No, they say, “How are we to explain this evidence [within the uniformitarianism framework]?” It is the same for creationists. The appropriate response is, “How are we to explain this evidence within a biblical creationist framework?”
Second, I would like to advise that many of the problems mentioned in the comments have been answered in numerous places, including the book “Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries” by Michael Oard, which can be found with Google. You can also search creation.com for responses, some at a lay level and others at an academic level.
Third, I am not aware of the issue with snakes you raised being addressed, although I have not searched for possible answers in the creationist literature. If indeed it has not been answered we may be able to find someone who could look at it, provided they can find time. I am sure there will be a satisfactory answer.
Fourth, I have experienced on many occasions how uniformitarians take great care in explaining the concept of geological time to people, such as how vast it is and how small humans are. Geological time is a major concept in that worldview. In the same way, biblical creationists explain the concept of geological catastrophe to people, including how enormous it was and how much of the surface of the earth was affected. That is the key. So, when people say that creationists have a major problem with xxxx and that xxxx is impossible, the answer is that people need to appreciate how big the catastrophe was. It was big to us, but not that big compared to the size of the earth.
Thank you very much.
LikeLike
No, Tasman Walker. Deep time is not an input into geological science, but an outcome from it. More generally, naturalistic explanations are not a foregone conclusion in science, but a null hypothesis. TH Huxley read the burial service on doctrinaire uniformitarianism at the 1869 meeting of the [UK] Geological Society.
It is not even an assumption that the laws of nature in the geological past are the same as the laws of nature today, but a conclusion forced on us by the fact that we can make sense of the chemical structures, let alone the textures and deposition sequences, of the rocks themselves.
It was in this sense that I applied that assumption to a phenomenon very familiar to you, the layer of baked laterite in between successive lava flows at the Giants Causeway, from which I inferred the passage of sufficient time between outflows for the lower flow to have undergone weathering. Reading the literature later I discovered that this is indeed the generally accepted explanation. You will no doubt have your own alternative explanation, whose plausibility readers can judge for themselves.
As for your comment that “I am sure there will be a satisfactory [Young Earth creationist] answer” to Joel’s argument, that is not even a pretence at a counterargument, but a blank cheque drawn on a bankrupt bank account.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Michael Ord in this book describes ‘unfossilized dinosaur bones’, which are ‘just like those of a dead cow lying in a field’. This does not give me confidence in his interpretation of the paleontological literature.
Also, the extinction of dinosaurs, and many other types of organisms at the end of the Cretaceous, is not some sort of great scientific puzzle, as he claims, but one that has been well understood for several decades. (This research not cited in the1994 quote from Greg Paul about the mysterious dinosaur extinction, probably because the book it comes from was the outcome of a conference several years earlier, predating the understanding of the Chicxulube crater.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for taking the time to provide your perspective.
LikeLike
I get the “it’s a worldview” issue, Tas. But from a Source Methods direction, it’s very much a “who pays attention to the data” issue long before any worldviews get to elbow in. And on that front your YEC simply doesn’t cut the mustard, and hasn’t historically either. Yes, you and many other creationists write lots of posts and technical papers (I have many thousands of them in my TIP project data field, including dozens from you), but when it comes to accounting for the known data, what your efforts amount to is trimming down the data set until it appears to match up with what your “worldview” dictates must be so, the fairly recent theological mandates of Flood Geology “Creation Science” that are actually no more traditional and historically buttressed than using a land line dial telephone or flying in an airplane; all else is ignored.
It is amusing to observe how creationism has evolved over time. Old Henry Morris era ones rejecting Continental Drift dogmatically; 21st century creationists nouveau blithely appealing to plate tectonics as they seek to shuffle landmasses around to somehow generate a workable sequence of geological events pre- and post-Flood. Those same old Duane Gish steeped creationists rejecting speciation and common descent in principle, even in the horse fossil sequence; the current baraminologists opening the monobaramin floodgates wide and allowing an amazingly frisky speciation process to play out (one radically and indefensibly faster than anything observable in actual speciation and population biology), including an acceptance of that same horse sequence.
All this muddle is of course an inevitable mutation in your thinking, given the need to somehow cram a limited number of created kinds aboard Noah’s Ark while still accounting for the observed fossil and living species diversity. It was a daunting task for Frank Marsh back in the pre-tectonic pre-DNA 1940s, and it hasn’t got any easier for the baramin data-fiddlers today, with the glut of fossil and genetic data we have on the table in 2019.
But keep telling yourself it’s just a matter of conflicting “worldviews” Tas, if that makes you feel better.
LikeLiked by 1 person