This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
Don't bother explaining. I'll just take your word for it because you typed it out.Sure they doThose two things have nothing to do with each other.Ridiculous statements like this are what annoys people. Just say that you personally don't believe in the bible. That's fine. Millions have been affected by the bible in extremely positive ways. It certainly helps people's intelligence when they followed Jesus teachings and were able to shed drug habits, alcoholism, treat others better, learn to think of others first, etc. (the list could go on and on).I see your problem. You equate bible knowledge with being smart. Definitely something that will be hard to get past for you.'matuski said:Dang. Even when you try to prove me wrong, you prove me right. You can't help but vindicate me.
If it helps, the only thing knowing the bible might help with is hypocrisy. Certainly doesn't help anyone's intelligence.
eta - been a while since I've had a stalker, no idea when or where but I must have really gotten under your skin.
Intelligence, as I've always understood it, is one's capacity for learning. You can't increase your intelligence. You can increase your knowledge, you can increase your understanding, you can increase your wisdom. But intelligence is something that is out of your control.Again, that's my understanding.
Wisdom does work better. But I was responding to matsuki's post that the bible doesn't help anyone's intelligence.
A ridiculous statement. Does the bible bolster one's IQ? Probably not, but then does reading Darwin? Of course not.
The word intelligence, as Matsuki was using it, was used in a way to slam the bible believers, as he obviously feels the bible is full of falsehoods and is a book of fables. I personally believe the bible, as I know you do Crosseyed. So if Jesus did live on earth, and the bible is an accurate depiction of his life, than we are more intelligent by reading it.
If Darwin was wrong and there is no such thing as evolution from a single-celled organism to man, than reading The Origin of the Species doesn't make one more intelligent, it makes one dumber.
It all depends on what the truth is.
I don't feel like arguing this point for point because you are doing the exact thing all Creationists do - deny the evidence. There is plenty of evidence that Pakicetus is a direct ancestor or shares a common ancestor with modern whales but you fall back on the predictable "it is primarily a land animal" stance. That is the point of the whole thing. At some period in time, "whales" were entirely terrestrial and Pakicetus is a relative. We have a semi-aquatic land mammal, found by a sea, that shares unique traits with modern cetaceans, and age is consistent with other fossils of primative/proto whales found later - all of that supports the whale theory. You act like the name is some black mark on evolution, all it should show you is how convincing the skull is in regards to the Pakicetus-whale relationship. The guy that found it was searching for terrestrial mammals, that was his specialty. He wasn't looking for a whale ancestor - that is just what the evidence suggested it was. However, even if Pakicetus isn't a relative of modern whales as you claim, the other fossils don't get to be so easily dismissed as being a misclassified land mammal. You are facing the hurdle of all Creationists, you are coming from the assumption that Evolution is wrong and can't be right and therefore are blind to any evidence put in front of you.sn0mm1s and any others. Back to whale evolution for a bit, as it was brought up earlier in the thread and I unfortunately have been too busy to get to it.
Pakicetus is the first fossil I've researched. When it was first discovered, the skull and portions of the mandible were discovered in coastal regions of Pakistan (thus the name). It was immediately hyped as a whale ancestor, and Science magazine put it on the cover: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4595.toc
So for years, Pakicetus was used as a great example of evolution. But as you see here, there was no science involved. What happened was no different than if I found 50 pages of Gone with the Wind and attempted to write the story around it. It's artistic and it's speculative, but its not science.
In 2001, more remains were found. Quickly, it was learned that the pakicetus looked nothing at all like the pictures that had been in people's brains for years. Now it's clear that the animal looked a lot like a dog or a wolf. In fact, it was written by one of the scientists involved that it was a "terrestrial mammal, no more amphibious than a tapir". This same scientist though, argued in 2009 that one reason it could still be argued as a whale ancestor is that it had heavy bones and orbits that were close together on the skull, indicative of aquatic animals that live in water and look at emerged objects.
The artistic renderings that were given to pakicetus are still used inaccurately and give false delusions to many people. As evidence,
http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2011/06/whales.php which was written in 2011. Why do they continue to show these pictures? The pakicetus was not an aquatic mammal, but a terrestrial one.
It was said in a Nature article that if the pakicetus was found without the skull, it would have just been thought of as an artiodactyl. So despite all the differences from whales throughout the entire body, why is the pakicetus listed in the order cetacea?
Another interesting statement in that Nature article was that the ankle bones were adapted for running. It was stated that this adaptation was "once thought to be unique in artiodactyls, but now it is clear that it also occurred in cetaceans".
Why can't they just allow this animal to be the artiodactyl that it obviously is? Well first it would be embarrassing. The very name pakicetus means "whale found in pakistan".
So despite the myriad of differences between whales and this fossil, it continues to get included as an example of whale evolution. Why?
"the arrangement of cusps on the molar teeth, a folding in a bone of the middle ear, and the positioning of the ear bones within the skull--are absent in other land mammals but a signature of later Eocene whales"
About the teeth: "Cladistic arguments have been used to link this wear pattern to aquatic predation on fish, but no functional model or modern analogue is known. Moreover, this kind of dental wear also occurs in raoellid artiodactyls. Although this dental wear probably represents a distinctive way of food processing, it does not necessarily imply aquatic life."
So....there are other artiodactyls that have this type of dental wear.
The middle ear is often cited as the best evidence for this animal being a whale. But why? It's admitted that pakicetus had ears that were poorly adapted for underwater hearing and were adapted for hearing above ground.
Notice this statement by Nature: "It is most likely that the specializations of the pakicetid middle ear are analogous to those of some subterranean mammals and are related to the reception of substrate-borne vibrations or sound when the head is in contact with the ground".
So the all-important middle-ear similarities are probably there so that the mammal can hear vibrations when its head is in contact with the ground!
The facts regarding pakicetus are that is is nothing like a whale at all. The embarrassment of calling it a whale originally, putting it in all sorts of books and articles, and allowing artists depictions to affect students for decades is too much. They stand their ground and insist that this is an ancestor of a whale.
I think this is a perfect example of the problem of evolutionists "knowing exactly where to look" and than finding exactly what they were looking for! They needed a whale link, they found a few fragements of a skull that had some similarities with whales, and they called it a missing link. Time has shown that to be a poor comparison.
Again, there is zero proof that this is a whale ancestor. Whether it is or isn't rests solely in the deductive reasoning of the people analyzing it. The truth is that this was a land mammal with teeth similar to other land mammals, and with ears specially adapted for hearing above ground.
Claiming it is a whale ancestor is not science. Surely you guys can see the difference in calling this a whale ancestor and in other forms of science. So when I say I don't buy "hook, line and sinker" into the entirety of what science tells us, that's why. Fictional drawings, faulty analysis and blatant speculation aren't science. They are science fiction.
Please don't bring logic and scientific evidence into this thread.
Thanks for responding. That being said, you are making some pretty bold assumptions that you have no right to make.The statement "at some point in time, "whales" were entirely terrestrial", is not provable. You are assuming that they are because you necessarily need evolution to be correct.I don't feel like arguing this point for point because you are doing the exact thing all Creationists do - deny the evidence. There is plenty of evidence that Pakicetus is a direct ancestor or shares a common ancestor with modern whales but you fall back on the predictable "it is primarily a land animal" stance. That is the point of the whole thing. At some period in time, "whales" were entirely terrestrial and Pakicetus is a relative. We have a semi-aquatic land mammal, found by a sea, that shares unique traits with modern cetaceans, and age is consistent with other fossils of primative/proto whales found later - all of that supports the whale theory. You act like the name is some black mark on evolution, all it should show you is how convincing the skull is in regards to the Pakicetus-whale relationship. The guy that found it was searching for terrestrial mammals, that was his specialty. He wasn't looking for a whale ancestor - that is just what the evidence suggested it was. However, even if Pakicetus isn't a relative of modern whales as you claim, the other fossils don't get to be so easily dismissed as being a misclassified land mammal. You are facing the hurdle of all Creationists, you are coming from the assumption that Evolution is wrong and can't be right and therefore are blind to any evidence put in front of you.sn0mm1s and any others. Back to whale evolution for a bit, as it was brought up earlier in the thread and I unfortunately have been too busy to get to it.
Pakicetus is the first fossil I've researched. When it was first discovered, the skull and portions of the mandible were discovered in coastal regions of Pakistan (thus the name). It was immediately hyped as a whale ancestor, and Science magazine put it on the cover: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4595.toc
So for years, Pakicetus was used as a great example of evolution. But as you see here, there was no science involved. What happened was no different than if I found 50 pages of Gone with the Wind and attempted to write the story around it. It's artistic and it's speculative, but its not science.
In 2001, more remains were found. Quickly, it was learned that the pakicetus looked nothing at all like the pictures that had been in people's brains for years. Now it's clear that the animal looked a lot like a dog or a wolf. In fact, it was written by one of the scientists involved that it was a "terrestrial mammal, no more amphibious than a tapir". This same scientist though, argued in 2009 that one reason it could still be argued as a whale ancestor is that it had heavy bones and orbits that were close together on the skull, indicative of aquatic animals that live in water and look at emerged objects.
The artistic renderings that were given to pakicetus are still used inaccurately and give false delusions to many people. As evidence,
http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2011/06/whales.php which was written in 2011. Why do they continue to show these pictures? The pakicetus was not an aquatic mammal, but a terrestrial one.
It was said in a Nature article that if the pakicetus was found without the skull, it would have just been thought of as an artiodactyl. So despite all the differences from whales throughout the entire body, why is the pakicetus listed in the order cetacea?
Another interesting statement in that Nature article was that the ankle bones were adapted for running. It was stated that this adaptation was "once thought to be unique in artiodactyls, but now it is clear that it also occurred in cetaceans".
Why can't they just allow this animal to be the artiodactyl that it obviously is? Well first it would be embarrassing. The very name pakicetus means "whale found in pakistan".
So despite the myriad of differences between whales and this fossil, it continues to get included as an example of whale evolution. Why?
"the arrangement of cusps on the molar teeth, a folding in a bone of the middle ear, and the positioning of the ear bones within the skull--are absent in other land mammals but a signature of later Eocene whales"
About the teeth: "Cladistic arguments have been used to link this wear pattern to aquatic predation on fish, but no functional model or modern analogue is known. Moreover, this kind of dental wear also occurs in raoellid artiodactyls. Although this dental wear probably represents a distinctive way of food processing, it does not necessarily imply aquatic life."
So....there are other artiodactyls that have this type of dental wear.
The middle ear is often cited as the best evidence for this animal being a whale. But why? It's admitted that pakicetus had ears that were poorly adapted for underwater hearing and were adapted for hearing above ground.
Notice this statement by Nature: "It is most likely that the specializations of the pakicetid middle ear are analogous to those of some subterranean mammals and are related to the reception of substrate-borne vibrations or sound when the head is in contact with the ground".
So the all-important middle-ear similarities are probably there so that the mammal can hear vibrations when its head is in contact with the ground!
The facts regarding pakicetus are that is is nothing like a whale at all. The embarrassment of calling it a whale originally, putting it in all sorts of books and articles, and allowing artists depictions to affect students for decades is too much. They stand their ground and insist that this is an ancestor of a whale.
I think this is a perfect example of the problem of evolutionists "knowing exactly where to look" and than finding exactly what they were looking for! They needed a whale link, they found a few fragements of a skull that had some similarities with whales, and they called it a missing link. Time has shown that to be a poor comparison.
Again, there is zero proof that this is a whale ancestor. Whether it is or isn't rests solely in the deductive reasoning of the people analyzing it. The truth is that this was a land mammal with teeth similar to other land mammals, and with ears specially adapted for hearing above ground.
Claiming it is a whale ancestor is not science. Surely you guys can see the difference in calling this a whale ancestor and in other forms of science. So when I say I don't buy "hook, line and sinker" into the entirety of what science tells us, that's why. Fictional drawings, faulty analysis and blatant speculation aren't science. They are science fiction.
While I was glad to finally have someone respond to that post, he didn't bring a shred of scientific evidence to his post. He just spent a paragraph telling me that I'm wrong and that the pakicetus is a whale ancestor because.....well....because it is!
Interesting video about Pakicetus and what is involved from a land mammal to whale. Using population genetics is that even possible.I don't feel like arguing this point for point because you are doing the exact thing all Creationists do - deny the evidence. There is plenty of evidence that Pakicetus is a direct ancestor or shares a common ancestor with modern whales but you fall back on the predictable "it is primarily a land animal" stance. That is the point of the whole thing. At some period in time, "whales" were entirely terrestrial and Pakicetus is a relative. We have a semi-aquatic land mammal, found by a sea, that shares unique traits with modern cetaceans, and age is consistent with other fossils of primative/proto whales found later - all of that supports the whale theory. You act like the name is some black mark on evolution, all it should show you is how convincing the skull is in regards to the Pakicetus-whale relationship. The guy that found it was searching for terrestrial mammals, that was his specialty. He wasn't looking for a whale ancestor - that is just what the evidence suggested it was. However, even if Pakicetus isn't a relative of modern whales as you claim, the other fossils don't get to be so easily dismissed as being a misclassified land mammal. You are facing the hurdle of all Creationists, you are coming from the assumption that Evolution is wrong and can't be right and therefore are blind to any evidence put in front of you.sn0mm1s and any others. Back to whale evolution for a bit, as it was brought up earlier in the thread and I unfortunately have been too busy to get to it.
Pakicetus is the first fossil I've researched. When it was first discovered, the skull and portions of the mandible were discovered in coastal regions of Pakistan (thus the name). It was immediately hyped as a whale ancestor, and Science magazine put it on the cover: http://www.sciencema...nt/220/4595.toc
So for years, Pakicetus was used as a great example of evolution. But as you see here, there was no science involved. What happened was no different than if I found 50 pages of Gone with the Wind and attempted to write the story around it. It's artistic and it's speculative, but its not science.
In 2001, more remains were found. Quickly, it was learned that the pakicetus looked nothing at all like the pictures that had been in people's brains for years. Now it's clear that the animal looked a lot like a dog or a wolf. In fact, it was written by one of the scientists involved that it was a "terrestrial mammal, no more amphibious than a tapir". This same scientist though, argued in 2009 that one reason it could still be argued as a whale ancestor is that it had heavy bones and orbits that were close together on the skull, indicative of aquatic animals that live in water and look at emerged objects.
The artistic renderings that were given to pakicetus are still used inaccurately and give false delusions to many people. As evidence,
http://michigantoday...1/06/whales.php which was written in 2011. Why do they continue to show these pictures? The pakicetus was not an aquatic mammal, but a terrestrial one.
It was said in a Nature article that if the pakicetus was found without the skull, it would have just been thought of as an artiodactyl. So despite all the differences from whales throughout the entire body, why is the pakicetus listed in the order cetacea?
Another interesting statement in that Nature article was that the ankle bones were adapted for running. It was stated that this adaptation was "once thought to be unique in artiodactyls, but now it is clear that it also occurred in cetaceans".
Why can't they just allow this animal to be the artiodactyl that it obviously is? Well first it would be embarrassing. The very name pakicetus means "whale found in pakistan".
So despite the myriad of differences between whales and this fossil, it continues to get included as an example of whale evolution. Why?
"the arrangement of cusps on the molar teeth, a folding in a bone of the middle ear, and the positioning of the ear bones within the skull--are absent in other land mammals but a signature of later Eocene whales"
About the teeth: "Cladistic arguments have been used to link this wear pattern to aquatic predation on fish, but no functional model or modern analogue is known. Moreover, this kind of dental wear also occurs in raoellid artiodactyls. Although this dental wear probably represents a distinctive way of food processing, it does not necessarily imply aquatic life."
So....there are other artiodactyls that have this type of dental wear.
The middle ear is often cited as the best evidence for this animal being a whale. But why? It's admitted that pakicetus had ears that were poorly adapted for underwater hearing and were adapted for hearing above ground.
Notice this statement by Nature: "It is most likely that the specializations of the pakicetid middle ear are analogous to those of some subterranean mammals and are related to the reception of substrate-borne vibrations or sound when the head is in contact with the ground".
So the all-important middle-ear similarities are probably there so that the mammal can hear vibrations when its head is in contact with the ground!
The facts regarding pakicetus are that is is nothing like a whale at all. The embarrassment of calling it a whale originally, putting it in all sorts of books and articles, and allowing artists depictions to affect students for decades is too much. They stand their ground and insist that this is an ancestor of a whale.
I think this is a perfect example of the problem of evolutionists "knowing exactly where to look" and than finding exactly what they were looking for! They needed a whale link, they found a few fragements of a skull that had some similarities with whales, and they called it a missing link. Time has shown that to be a poor comparison.
Again, there is zero proof that this is a whale ancestor. Whether it is or isn't rests solely in the deductive reasoning of the people analyzing it. The truth is that this was a land mammal with teeth similar to other land mammals, and with ears specially adapted for hearing above ground.
Claiming it is a whale ancestor is not science. Surely you guys can see the difference in calling this a whale ancestor and in other forms of science. So when I say I don't buy "hook, line and sinker" into the entirety of what science tells us, that's why. Fictional drawings, faulty analysis and blatant speculation aren't science. They are science fiction.
Your ability to steadfastly miss what is in front of you is astonishing. Lets play connect the dots:1) They found the fossils near an ancient ocean.
Information. DNA is specified information. It does something. But more the point it is information that a third party can use. The only known source of this kind of information is intelligence: Languages, computer code....For Proteins to be made, as an example, you need DNA and a third party that knows how to read that information and use that information. So DNA needs ribosomes which are very sophisticated molecular machines to take the DNA information and turn it into a proteins. This kind of information only comes from intelligence.
How do we know that something that looks similar is homologous? We are finding that convergent evolution is ubiquitous. We find Tasmanian wolfs that are very similar to north American wolfs yet are not homologous. We find sonar in bats and dolphins without any transition forms for either. The just appear. Are bats a close relative to dolphins?
Is this a hypothesis that evolution puts forth?Or am I out of line to assume you are pulling this out of your rear?
Good grief.
Not really very interesting. It is a standard argument from incredulity with some numbers that are covered up by swimming whales.
Pakicetids go back further than 50 mya and where even still around for millions of years after the branching occurred. The list of whales and proto whales don't need to be in serial order. They may not even be direct descendants of one another. Also, he seems to be ignoring punctuated equilibrium again.Fossilization is a very rare thing - not the norm. The fact that we have enough fossils to even piece together a picture is rather remarkable. It is highly unlikely there will ever be a flip book showing everything from a single celled organism to what exists today.
1 is irrelevant because it was a land animal, not a whale. 2 would obviously be important if this animal was a whale ancestor.We can discuss 3. What specific key features did it have that made it whale-like? It's inner-ear? It's been established that the animal's unique ear configuration probably enabled it to hear by putting it's ear close to the ground, but wouldn't have been effective underwater. What else?
Convergent evolution is a possibility - however, you should notice that the word "evolution" is in the term. We do find transitional forms for dolphins - I haven't looked into bats but I am sure they exist. Hell, we have blind humans that have been shown to use sonar. Your arguments are getting more and more ridiculous.
C'mon, molecules form, minerals form, crystals form, all sorts of stuff form in very "intelligent" ways just based on physics and chemistry. Also, no evolutionist is going to say that life started with ribosomes. In fact, it isn't even believed that life started with DNA. Please take your noise elsewhere or go read a little more. Evolutionist don't think life went from inanimate dirt to complex systems - that is what Creationists think.
That's the bottom line right there. You are committed to this way of thinking because the idea of a designer is not one that you can take seriously. So it wouldn't matter if a scientist showed up at your house and absolutely obliterated the fossil record right in front of you. You'd say "well what alternative do YOU have?".I fully realize I can't scientifically prove God to you or anyone else. I feel there are many logical/scientific evidences for design and you don't share those beliefs, and I won't waste time going into them, because you've already proven that you would reject them. My opinion is that you reject those evidences as harshly as the fundamentalist rejects the obvious evidence that the earth is older than 6,000 years.
While it's obvious you don't share his beliefs, comparing DNA and/or life to minerals, crystals and molecules is a pretty unfair comparison, don't you think?
So you did pull that out of your rear, thats what I thought all along.
So you did pull that out of your rear, thats what I thought all along.
Do you even know what DNA is?
If you find a book is it evidence of random chance or intelligence?You have to give me more to go on than good grief.
No idea what this means.
Not irrelevant because no one is saying it is a whale. It is a likely relative of whales.
How do you know it wouldn't be effective underwater? We don't know all what it could do or what advantages it could give. The point is that that bone is only found in modern cetaceans. So, you are just claiming that this older fossil with bones and teeth similar to primative/proto whales is just random chance? What about the other fossils listed? I see you ignored those.
Any of you geniuses want to take a stab at this question?
Comon shader, you missed the classic golddigger play.I ask simple, direct questions - he posts some random crap that has nothing to do with anything. Specifically nothing to do with the questions posed.So you did pull that out of your rear, thats what I thought all along.
We find bones that are in the same strata where the more advanced bone is lower in strata then its predecessor. But the fossil look like they are homologous so they must be. Right? We jump through hoopes to make the fossil record look like evolution.
This isn't even the right question. Science is the study of the physical and natural world. God is spirit and supernatural. Why would you ask for scientific proof of God? The question itself shows that your concept of God is incorrect.
No, not in the least. Not when he is using arguments that complex things with order necessarily need to be designed intelligently with some intent. Remove all the life from the earth and you still have a dynamic planet creating and destroying all sorts compounds, mountain ranges, seas, rivers, canyons etc. etc. all the time. Weather is a very complex system that even with supercomputers we still can't predict much further than a few days out with any accuracy. To start arguing about the complexity of the modern cell as the starting point - when the cell itself has been around billions of years is disingenuous at best. He is just trying to add noise to the argument. Same thing with his fixation on DNA information.
How would this particular discussion transpire if he were sitting in the bachelor mansion chatting with other contestants or the bachelorette? Would it air? :blog:I'm just here to see golddigger discuss probability again.
They had "superfans" on Bachelor Pad this season. I imagine it would go about as well as those interactions.How would this particular discussion transpire if he were sitting in the bachelor mansion chatting with other contestants or the bachelorette? Would it air? :blog:I'm just here to see golddigger discuss probability again.
Fossil record and animal similarities are what ignited the theory of Evolution - not the other way around. Everything from genetics to the fossil record show it to be consistent theory.
This is talking in circles.The problem in the context of this topic in particular is the religious side attempting to challenge scientific theory to different standards than their own version.
Bingo! We have a winner! Life is just an effect of chemical reactions happening throughout the universe. Evolution is modifications to those bound chemicals which produce living organisms.That's it.
Not really. mind sharing?
Convergent evolution may have evolution in its name, but what it means is that unrelated species have similar features that are not the result of evolution.Blind humans do not have sonar equipment that bats or dolphins have. Humans just listen to how the sound bonces back to them after they click with their mouth.
Crystals do not have information. I stated that specified information is something a third party can understand.We have two theories of have abiogenesis happened. Molecular evolution and RNA, but neither have proven much. Just building a huge chemical does note make life. You need the equipment to read the information and do something with it..
Because there is absolutely zero proof/evidence that lends credence to the theory of a creator. THAT is why it is taken as seriously as unicorns and leprechauns are.
First assumption : God does not exist, that everything happened because of materialism (the laws of nature)Now prove that God exists without violating the first assumption.
How do you know that it would? The discoverer of the fossil said this about the inner ear: "In the case of pakicetids, the absence of air sinuses insulating the ears, the firm fusion of the periotic to the surrounding bones, and the presence of a flat tympanic membrane suggest that reception of airborne sound is well developed, but are inconsistent with good underwater hearing. It is most likely that the specializations of the pakicetid middle ear are analogous to those of some subterranean mammals and are related to the reception of substrate-borne vibrations or sound when the head is in contact with the ground. Turtles are in close contact with the substrate and gather sensory information using this method"
Say you are someplace new in the universe where man has never gone before and you find a book. Would you think that book was from random chance or from something intelligent?
Troll.I'm just here to see golddigger discuss probability again.
