That Pesky "Dinsoaurs lived millions of years ago" thing...

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Comments

  • Reply 141 of 212
    craiger77craiger77 Posts: 133member
    I don't think this thread is going all that bad. As a biologist I find it interesting to read how others interpret evolution. I get as upset as anyone here when creationist types force their religion as science, but at the same time am fascinated by people who believe so strongly against overwhelming evidence to the contrary.



    Anyway, given that the Demilitarized Zone (having grown up during the Vietnam war that is all I think of when seeing the letters DMZ) has finally tried to answer the "baleen problem" I thought I would weigh in.



    First, lets clarify what baleen whales eat. Most people think it is just plankton which they envision as being tiny little things they saw under the microscope when looking at pond water in biology class. Actually, plankton can be as large as shrimp size and many, if not most, baleen whales eat fish if they are in high enough concentrations. The lunge feeding that DMZ referred to is in fact used to catch small schooling fishes such as herring and capelin.



    The problem in DMZ's logic is that because he can't imagine anything less than modern day baleen as being effective he can't imagine what whales ate as they lost their teeth and evolved baleen. Well, DMZ next time you are eating your breakfast of Cheerios take a big mouthful with lots of milk. Now clench your teeth tight and make some pressure inside your mouth. What happens (besides your mother slapping you silly for making such a mess)? The milk is forced out and the cheerios are still inside your mouth waiting to be swallowed! So you see, even with all your teeth, and no baleen to speak of, you have pretty effectively imitated filter feeding!! Now think of a primitive ocean just swarming with plankton and small schooling fish. You are a big whale and grabbing all those small fish with your teeth is taking a lot of energy for little reward. Some small mutation occurs that changes the shape of your mouth or spacing of your teeth. Now when swallowing large amounts of seawater and then forcing it out with your jaw closed some fish and plankton stay on the inside of your mouth and you can lick them off with your tongue and swallow them. Now you are getting much more food for less work. You are able to have more, stronger babies than your fellow whales and those babies have the same mutation, increasing their survival and ability to pass on their genes. So starts the path to the baleen we see in whales today.



    Baleen whales evolved from ancestors with teeth. The statement that "You have to start WITHOUT any and ALL of these interdependent systems and build them into the cretaure, one at a time---one "mutation" at a time." is nonsense. Every living thing on earth has built on the life before it. It is probable that teeth and baleen were present in species of whales for millions of years until the cost of growing teeth outweighed any benefit from having them. Whale fossils are pretty rare so there is not a very good record. They are big animals and since bones on the bottom of the ocean are consumed by other creatures the chance of fossilization is pretty low. Probably need something like an underwater landslide to bury them quickly enough.



    DMZ lacks even a rudimentary understanding what evolution is so I will try to change that. Put simply, evolution is any change in gene frequency. There is nothing in evolution that requires that this change be beneficial, but if it is there is an increased chance that it will be passed on to future generations. If some evil dictator comes to power and starts killing everyone with red hair, the frequency of genes for red hair will decrease in the population because there will be less people carrying the gene who are able to pass it on to their kids. This is evolution. What DMZ and most others do is confuse evolution with speciation. They say evolution isn't happening because we don't see new species arising in our short lifetimes, but that just means they don't understand the theory.



    Another thing I would like to clarify. People tend to confuse evolution and the theory of evolution. Creationists think that if they can prove the theory of evolution wrong they will have disproved evolution. No. Evolution is something we have observed to have happened, while the theory of evolution is used to try to explain how it happened. If the theory is wrong then we simply have to come up with another one to explain how live on this planet has arrived at the diversity and complexity we see today from simple origins. This always reminds me of the old joke: Why did the chicken cross the road? We scientist, after careful observation and experimentation, have came up with the theory that it did it to cross the road. The creationists are jumping up and down saying it never crossed in the first place.



    It really boggles my mind how people can say that evolution is so improbable and then replace it with a theory that depends on something like god being able to magically create the entire universe in 6 days out of nothing. How did he do that? The famous biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." This, more than anything other evidence of evolution, convinces me that it is true. Of course every time I have dissected a dolphin or porpoise and have come across those vestigial leg bones that kind of reinforces my thinking too!
  • Reply 142 of 212
    hassan i sabbahhassan i sabbah Posts: 3,987member
    dmz. I beg you: please read the post above this one from end to end. Comment on it if you see anything in it you don't understand and tell us what you disagree with.
  • Reply 143 of 212
    rampancyrampancy Posts: 363member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Fellowship

    This thread is close to extinction.



    very close



    Fellowship




    I suppose that the moderators would be a selective pressure reducing the fitness of threads like these.
  • Reply 144 of 212
    rampancyrampancy Posts: 363member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by craiger77

    How did he do that? The famous biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said: "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."





    And, as a slap in the face to the usual "Evolutionism = Godless Atheism" schtick, Dobzhansky himself was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian.



    "Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology...the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness."
  • Reply 145 of 212
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    rampancy: forum moderation is an example of "evolution through artificial selection," if you will.
  • Reply 146 of 212
    dmzdmz Posts: 5,775member
    I think the issue I have with craiger77 is that, instead of answering the hard question of the baleen, has moved the rub of all this back to



    Quote:

    Every living thing on earth has built on the life before it.



    This pushes the hard questions back behind the curtain, agian, to an unkown "prototype" creature that we don't have to answers any hard questions over, because nothing "close" exists in the fossil record.



    I think this is circular, in an useless way.



    We have roughly six million species on the planet at this time (this is the most conservative estimate I could find.) But if you throw in the number "missing links" this number would have to go up exponentially.





    I think a rough estimate of what we see today "has come about in the last 500 million years" if you subcribe to evolution. There isn't enough time to build even 1 million species---placed "end to end" (yes that's simplistic---you would be popping out species at a rate of one every 500 years.



    I think the above is a bit simplistic, but if vertabrates are only showing up in the last 200-300m years, create a chain of species, roughly add up the number of genes that need to be created, in series, throw in whatever failure factor/missing link factor you want---2X, 5X, 100X, 1000X?---which gives you a unbelievbably rapid rate of "mutation".



    As they say "not in a million years".



    frag me, rag me, slag me, I gotta go get my work done.
  • Reply 147 of 212
    groveratgroverat Posts: 10,872member
    owned



    dmz, buddy, just stop posting. Just do whatever work you are supposedly being kept from and stop posting. I am officially throwing the towel in for you.
  • Reply 148 of 212
    haraldharald Posts: 2,152member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dmz

    I think the issue I have with craiger77 is that, instead of answering the hard question of the baleen



    snip



    , frag me, rag me, slag me, I gotta go get my work done.




    OK!



    He did answer the baleen question. Directly, comprehensively and technically. He wrote how it was biologically possible to directly answer your question. How it was not necessary to imagine a whale without teeth or baleen, or with both. How whales could eat before they had baleen. How evolution, incidentally, would have made this more economical for some whales.



    Did you not see that?



    How would you answer this bit:



    "next time you are eating your breakfast of Cheerios take a big mouthful with lots of milk. Now clench your teeth tight and make some pressure inside your mouth. What happens (besides your mother slapping you silly for making such a mess)? The milk is forced out and the cheerios are still inside your mouth waiting to be swallowed! So you see, even with all your teeth, and no baleen to speak of, you have pretty effectively imitated filter feeding!! Now think of a primitive ocean just swarming with plankton and small schooling fish. You are a big whale and grabbing all those small fish with your teeth is taking a lot of energy for little reward. Some small mutation occurs that changes the shape of your mouth or spacing of your teeth. Now when swallowing large amounts of seawater and then forcing it out with your jaw closed some fish and plankton stay on the inside of your mouth and you can lick them off with your tongue and swallow them. Now you are getting much more food for less work. You are able to have more, stronger babies than your fellow whales and those babies have the same mutation, increasing their survival and ability to pass on their genes. So starts the path to the baleen we see in whales today.



    Baleen whales evolved from ancestors with teeth. The statement that "You have to start WITHOUT any and ALL of these interdependent systems and build them into the cretaure, one at a time---one "mutation" at a time." is nonsense."
  • Reply 149 of 212
    powerdocpowerdoc Posts: 8,123member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by dmz

    I think the issue I have with craiger77 is that, instead of answering the hard question of the baleen, has moved the rub of all this back to







    This pushes the hard questions back behind the curtain, agian, to an unkown "prototype" creature that we don't have to answers any hard questions over, because nothing "close" exists in the fossil record.



    I think this is circular, in an useless way.



    We have roughly six million species on the planet at this time (this is the most conservative estimate I could find.) But if you throw in the number "missing links" this number would have to go up exponentially.





    I think a rough estimate of what we see today "has come about in the last 500 million years" if you subcribe to evolution. There isn't enough time to build even 1 million species---placed "end to end" (yes that's simplistic---you would be popping out species at a rate of one every 500 years.



    I think the above is a bit simplistic, but if vertabrates are only showing up in the last 200-300m years, create a chain of species, roughly add up the number of genes that need to be created, in series, throw in whatever failure factor/missing link factor you want---2X, 5X, 100X, 1000X?---which gives you a unbelievbably rapid rate of "mutation".



    As they say "not in a million years".



    frag me, rag me, slag me, I gotta go get my work done.




    Your argument do not stand. The evolution is an exponantial process. If only one specie give ten new species every one million year, you will have an astronomical number of species in one hundred millions of years (10e 100).
  • Reply 150 of 212
    4th time asking the essential question-



    Dmz-



    Is there any possible evidence which could convince you of the validity of evolution as a scientific theory? If so what?
  • Reply 151 of 212
    craiger77craiger77 Posts: 133member
    Perhaps we should just give DMZ the nickname The Sheik and call it good.
  • Reply 152 of 212
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by craiger77

    Perhaps we should just give DMZ the nickname The Sheik and call it good.



    Craiger77:



    Perhaps you can answer this. I was just thinking that the crux of dmz's argument is that he's thinking of all of this teleologically--something that Darwin specifically positions himself against. I'm trying to remember all of those earlier (pre-Darwinian) versions of evolution. Is it LeMarc (sp?) who was the leading proponent of that teleological vision of the evolution of species? That is, that all species are inexorably moving toward some "goal"?



    That's what I meant when I said earlier that the terms of teh debate have hardly shifted (on the creationist side) in 150 years--except insofar as Christian conservatives have exerted tremendous energy in the last 30 years to positioning their philosophy and politics as "science."



    There's also the notion of punctuated equilibrium in all of this to consider....



    Cheers

    Scott
  • Reply 153 of 212
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by midwinter

    There's also the notion of punctuated equilibrium in all of this to consider....



    Oh, you mean that even more bogus, unworkable version of evolution? Yes, this has been pre-ridiculed for you -- no reasons given, but aparently punctuated equlibrium is even more laughable than the rest of this evolution nonsense.



    Just thought I'd warn you ahead of time.
  • Reply 154 of 212
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by shetline

    Oh, you mean that even more bogus, unworkable version of evolution? Yes, this has been pre-ridiculed for you -- no reasons given, but aparently punctuated equlibrium is even more laughable than the rest of thins evolution nonsense.



    Just thought I'd warn you ahead of time.




    Just for a second there I thought you were serious. The cognitive dissonance was something else, let me tell you.
  • Reply 155 of 212
    sammi josammi jo Posts: 4,634member
    Evolution....creationism....we're all ignoring another possibility: "Interventionism". Perhaps the Earth is "someone else"'s petri dish and all life here is a "cosmic experiment", or a "species bank". Once it gets going, it requires little maintenance, just some observation or the collection of samples just like some of our scientific experimernts here. Farfetched? Wacky? Perhaps, but no weirder or outlandish than biblical "creationism".



    The religious and scientific communities steers well wide of such a notion because......... fill in the blank



    btw...did this thread get created, or has it evolved?
  • Reply 156 of 212
    wrong robotwrong robot Posts: 3,907member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sammi jo

    Evolution....creationism....we're all ignoring another possibility: "Interventionism". Perhaps the Earth is "someone else"'s petri dish and all life here is a "cosmic experiment", or a "species bank". Once it gets going, it requires little maintenance, just some observation or the collection of samples just like some of our scientific experimernts here. Farfetched? Wacky? Perhaps, but no weirder or outlandish than biblical "creationism".



    The religious and scientific communities steers well wide of such a notion because......... fill in the blank



    ?




  • Reply 157 of 212
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sammi jo

    Evolution....creationism....we're all ignoring another possibility: "Interventionism".



    Actually, I did bring this up as being in the range of possibilities before, although more in the guise of divine interventionism rather than alien. In another context (not this particular thread) I've spoken before about the possibility of alien involvement.



    Of course, the possiblility of alien involvement and the probability are two different things. Also, just like when you bring divine beings into the question, you have to ask what explanatory value aliens would add.



    If you've dug up remains of very old, complex technological artifacts from well before the age of man, proposing aliens adds explanatory value. If you haven't, and you're simply proposing aliens because life seems too amazing or complex, so you're looking for a source of intelligence to create or direct that complexity, you're just moving the problem you're trying to answer, not solving it. Now you have to solve where the aliens came from and how the aliens reached their advanced state. More aliens that gave those aliens their start? Turtles all the way down?



    I can think of speculative reasons to contemplate alien involvement. For example, let's take the assumption of natural biogenesis -- the chemical precursor to biological evolution -- but suppose that, although it can and has happened, it turns out to be so difficult and unlikely that it only occurs on one out of billions or trillions or more of worlds with suitable environments. If this is true, but life is still found on many worlds, then proposing alien assistance in establishing life on many of those worlds would have useful explanatory value.



    But since we have no knowledge yet of the abundance of life or lack thereof outside of our own little planet, since (although I'm sure some Area 51 fans might disagree) we have no solid evidence of ancient or current intelligent alien life, and since we don't have any way to calculate the probability of spontaneous biogenesis -- throwing aliens into the picture, to use the wording of Occam's Razor, is simply a needless multiplication of entities.
  • Reply 158 of 212
    rampancyrampancy Posts: 363member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by midwinter

    Craiger77:

    Is it LeMarc (sp?) who was the leading proponent of that teleological vision of the evolution of species? That is, that all species are inexorably moving toward some "goal"?



    There's also the notion of punctuated equilibrium in all of this to consider....





    Lamarckianism (named after the French naturalist Lamarck) is the idea that animals had an inborn "vital force" that allowed them to adapt to their surroundings.



    For example: the Giraffe needed to reach the branches of higher trees to get to the food it needed. So, it stretched its neck, and made it longer. Its offspring would have a higher neck, and it would keep on stretching its neck...as time went by, Giraffes stretched their necks to the length they are now.



    That's clearly, and totally FALSE. Lamarck's "Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics" was a leading theory of its day, but the rediscovery of the work of Gregor Mendel with respect to genes and alleles effectively sunk that theory. Natural Selection also won out because not only was it compatible with Mendel's work, but it could be scientifically tested. How do you test a theory that relies on "vital forces"? What are those vital forces?



    Gould and Lewontin's groundbreaking theory on Punctuated Equilibrium was just another possible explanation of the apparent lack of "transitional forms" that we know of (that's not to say they don't exist: we have a lot of "transitional forms" that trace the path of human/primate evolution, for example). For more information, look at talk.origin's Punctuated Equilibrium FAQ.



    It's worth pointing out that the concept of evolution as going towards more "advanced forms", or towards some "goal" is a gross misunderstanding and distortion of evolutionary biology. Evolution merely says that populations of organisms will experience a change in gene frequencies.
  • Reply 159 of 212
    rampancyrampancy Posts: 363member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sammi jo

    Evolution....creationism....we're all ignoring another possibility: "Interventionism". Perhaps the Earth is "someone else"'s petri dish and all life here is a "cosmic experiment", or a "species bank". Once it gets going, it requires little maintenance, just some observation or the collection of samples just like some of our scientific experimernts here. Farfetched? Wacky? Perhaps, but no weirder or outlandish than biblical "creationism".





    What about "Hitchhikersguideianism", which says that the Earth is a giant computer designed by mice to calculate the question to the answer to the meaning of life?
  • Reply 160 of 212
    sammi josammi jo Posts: 4,634member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by shetline

    Actually, I did bring this up as being in the range of possibilities before, although more in the guise of divine interventionism rather than alien. In another context (not this particular thread) I've spoken before about the possibility of alien involvement.



    Of course, the possiblility of alien involvement and the probability are two different things. Also, just like when you bring divine beings into the question, you have to ask what explanatory value aliens would add.



    If you've dug up remains of very old, complex technological artifacts from well before the age of man, proposing aliens adds explanatory value. If you haven't, and you're simply proposing aliens because life seems too amazing or complex, so you're looking for a source of intelligence to create or direct that complexity, you're just moving the problem you're trying to answer, not solving it. Now you have to solve where the aliens came from and how the aliens reached their advanced state. More aliens that gave those aliens their start? Turtles all the way down?



    I can think of speculative reasons to contemplate alien involvement. For example, let's take the assumption of natural biogenesis -- the chemical precursor to biological evolution -- but suppose that, although it can and has happened, it turns out to be so difficult and unlikely that it only occurs on one out of billions or trillions or more of worlds with suitable environments. If this is true, but life is still found on many worlds, then proposing alien assistance in establishing life on many of those worlds would have useful explanatory value.



    But since we have no knowledge yet of the abundance of life or lack thereof outside of our own little planet, since (although I'm sure some Area 51 fans might disagree) we have no solid evidence of ancient or current intelligent alien life, and since we don't have any way to calculate the probability of spontaneous biogenesis -- throwing aliens into the picture, to use the wording of Occam's Razor, is simply a needless multiplication of entities.




    One of the difficulties re. "have aliens been here, and are they still visiting" is the official public position of disinterest, and ridicule in the subject. If a "UFO" landed in the middle of Central Park with thousands of witnesses, how would anyone know for sure it was the "real thing", whatever that may be (we have no idea), or an elaborate hoax? Many people witness things, often with radar conformation, that defy standard explanations. The US Govt's own surveys into this stuff found that some 95% of "sightings" could be explained normally, but there were always those pesky 5% that remain unknowns. This is a pretty consistent ratio with UFO sightings. However, these phenomena happen to "a few people at a time", not en masse. And...how can you study something in the moment that occurs at random times and places, out of our control? If the president suddenly announced to the American (and world's) people one evening in an address from the White House that "we are not alone" in the universe, with all the big media hoopla to go with it, would you believe him, and why? Would an pronouncement be more believable than the testimony of military and airline pilots?



    In the 1950s, one reason stated to keep the subject "above top secret" was the fear of "mass panic and the collapse of traditional religious institutions". Why has this subject has been relegated to the bailiwick of loonytunes publications like the Weekly World News etc., when the knowledge of "is there other life out there" is considered one of the holy grails of science? There is far too much circumstantial evidence to ignore it, or not to study this seriously.



    I realize this is a little bit of a sidebar to the topic...but still relevant.

    http://www.mufon.com/fastfacts.htm
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