The non evolution of flying birds

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Roughly the same argument can be made against evolution involving ANY kind of complex creature on the planet; it is simply easier to visualize in the case of flying birds than in most other cases.

A flying bird needs a dozen or so highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers which have load-bearing structure totally unlike down feathers or anything else made for insulation on the planet, the complex system for turning flight feathers so that they open on up strokes like a venetian blind, a specialized light bone structure, specialized high-efficiency heart and lungs and in fact unidirectional flow-through lungs which are totally unlike anything else on the planet, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters, beaks (since the creature would no longer have hands to feet itself with, etc. etc.

http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Nature/Images/feather_diagram_big.gif

Flight feather with interlocking barbules

The flow-through lung could not plausibly evolve from anything else on the planet; you'd require an entire separate chain of evolution for birds as opposed to all other creatures with lungs, starting from dirt and one-celled organisms. The laws of probability of course forbid one such evolutionary chain, much less two.

Most of the other items would be anti-functional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening by mutation and selection as per the theory of evolution, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitesimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitesimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidirectional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

The argument that archeopteryx was any sort of an intermediate form between dinosaurs and birds is ruined by the fact that we have real bird fossils which are older than the archeopteryx; a child cannot be older than its parents. The archeopteryx was a fully functional if weird bird.

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@gungasnake,

If you start with invalid assumptions, then you will generate invalid conclusions. You have demonstrated this process nicely.

0 Replies

@gungasnake,

Gunga's usual silly argument.

So gunga, since things de-evolve if they don't use a feature or organ does that mean you don't have a cranial cavity?

This has been explained to you many times before. Nonfunctional features do not de-evolve simply because they don't serve a function. Unless they are detrimental to survival they can and do continue to be passed down.

Why do some birds have brightly colored plumage? What if a non bird has brightly colored feathers that don't allow it to fly yet but those feathers served the same purpose as the brightly colored plumage does in some birds? Do you really think those feathers would disappear?

1 Reply

@parados,

It betrays a profound misunderstanding of evolution theory, that's for sure.

Gunga, have you considered that feathers were used for more purposes then flight? That they also are critical body temperature control devices, and would have provided a real advantage to the cold-blooded animals? And that the same things that make them good insulators (light and hollow) also provide the basis for more surface area for flight with very little weight added?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

Its not even worth carrying any truth to this clown. His mind is hopelessly closed to evidence. Hes going to be part of an expedition looking for the ark.

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Try reading the post again. There's no rational reason to think that a creature which used down feathers for in solution would ever evolve those down feathers into flight feathers. It' s like the difference between roofing tiles and an airplane's wings.

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

I think I have my answer. Gunga has de-evolved to the point of having no cranial cavity.

Quote:

down feathers for in solution

It's like the difference between a moron and a complete idiot.

0 Replies

gunga probably doesn't understand why humans use down comforters. LOL

0 Replies

So, have you found the ark yet, Gunga?

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

they'll find the ark before anybody ever finds the first "intermediate fossil"...

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

Thousands of transitional fossils which fit the predictions of evolutionary theory have already been found. This is one of the reasons evolutionary theory is such a well established fact. For over a hundred years it's been making predictions which are validated by physical evidence.

Perhaps the reason you don't know this already is that your personal definition of "intermediate fossil" doesn't match the definition within evolutionary theory. Which in turn would indicate that you don't understand evolutionary theory. Instead you prefer to latch onto some bullshit theory provided by Creationists, which they label "evolution" even when it isn't.

Then you post articles which tell us that the bullshit version of evolution is bullshit.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Quote:

Thousands of transitional fossils which fit the predictions of evolutionary theory have already been found.

Says you... Here's what people who actually know what they're talking about say on the subject:

Quote:

The Fossils In General

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing'
evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the
most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record.
Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does
not provide them ..."

David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology)
Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum
Evolution, vol 28, Sep 1974, p 467

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps;
the fossils are missing in all the important places."

Francis Hitching
The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong
Penguin Books, 1982, p.19

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major
transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our
imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been
a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
"Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?"
Paleobiology, vol 6, January 1980, p. 127

"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when
they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line,
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight
argument."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89

"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be
claimed to be the ancestor of any other group. We do not have in the fossil
record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and
generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental
structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history
and has been conservative in habitat."

G. S. Carter, Professor & author
Fellow of Corpus Christi College
Cambridge, England
Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution
University of Washington Press, 1967

"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with
gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during
their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the
same as when they disappear ... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a
species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its
ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and
Paleontology, Harvard University
Natural History, 86(5):13, 1977

"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed,
why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the
earth?" (p. 206)

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such
intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely
graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest
objection which can be urged against my theory (of evolution)." (p. 292)

Charles Robert Darwin
The Origin of Species, 1st edition reprint
Avenel Books, 1979

The Abundance of Fossils

"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about
120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been
greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the
situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still
surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of
Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse
in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more
detailed information."

David M. Raup, Curator of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology"
Field Museum of Natural History
Vol. 50, No. 1, (Jan, 1979), p. 25

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological
exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely
more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been
discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are
filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species. The
availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit
objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What
is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major
groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They
can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection
of the fossil record."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems,
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 9

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more
than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so
complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack
of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of
material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson
Lund University, Sweden
Famous botanist and evolutionist
As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51

Evidence for Creation ?

"A circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in terms of a
particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that
it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?"

Dr.. Tom Kemp, Curator
University Museum of Oxford University
" A Fresh Look at the Fossil Record"
New Scientist, Dec 5, 1985, p. 66

"Much evidence can be advanced in favour of the theory of evolution -- from
biology, biogeography and paleontology, but I still think that to the
unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation.
... Can you imagine how an orchid, a duckweed, and a palm have come from
the same ancestry, and have we any evidence for this assumption? The
evolutionist must be prepared with an answer, but I think that most would
break down before an inquisition."

E.J.H. Corner, Prof of Botany,
Cambridge University, England
Evolution in Contemporary Botanical Thought,
Quadrangle Books, 1971, p. 97

"At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there
is nothing in the geological records that runs contrary to the view of
conservative creationists, that God created each species separately,
presumably from the dust of the earth."

Dr. Edmund J. Ambrose
Emeritus Prof of Cell Biology, University of London
The Nature and Origin of the Biological World
John Wiley & Sons, 1982, p. 164

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

Quote:

Quote:
Thousands of transitional fossils which fit the predictions of evolutionary theory have already been found.

Says you... Here's what people who actually know what they're talking about say on the subject:

I see that your sources have taken Gould and Darwin out of context and hacked their quotes to make them "appear" to support your case, when we all know that the don't. How many of these other sources have your propagandists misrepresented intentionally I wonder?

3 Replies

@rosborne979,

The nice thing about science is that it hasn't stayed in the 1970s like most of Gunga's quotes.

Lots of fossils have been found since the 1970's gunga. I realize you might not know that so consider this your first insight into the new world that exists today.

0 Replies

@rosborne979,

Quote:

I see that your sources have taken Gould and Darwin out of context and hacked their quotes to make them "appear" to support your case

In real life, if you don't want to be quoted as having said something, there is an overwhelmingly simple way to achieve that:

Don't Say It!

As far as Gould is concerned, if he thought there was even one intermediate fossil in this world, he and his associates would never have bothered inventing a new version of evolutionism which attempts to explain exactly this lack of intermediate fossils.

http://able2know.org/topic/121623-1

His Bullshit claims of being misquoted by creationists amount to an attempt to have his cake and eat it at the same time. The original goal was to get the dead hand of evolutionism out of his own field of palaeontology and in order to do that he had to lay out the case for needing a version (of evolution) which was not immediately ruined by the lack of intermediate fossils. Having achieved that goal, he then went on to claim that anybody who quoted those statements was an asshole.

That's bullshit.

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

Let me quote Gunga on his repeated attempts to disprove evolution..

Quote:

That's bullshit.

Gungasnake 9/6/08

0 Replies

Quote:

"...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line,
there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight
argument."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist,
British Museum of Natural History, London
As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 89

0 Replies

@rosborne979,

That they intentionally misrepresent Darwin shows how weak their arguments are. Radicals do that!

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Who's misrepresenting Darwin and how?

I mean, that's a basic mantra for people who can't think, either some body submits to this phony temple of Darwinism, or they're a liar. Darwin plianly knew that his theory demanded that the vast bulk of all fossils be intermediates and the total lack of such struck him as a problem; he assumed that as bulldozers and backhoes got better, vast numbers of such intermediate fossils would turn up. As several of the people I quote note however, today, many generations of Earth moving equipment later, none have.

"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about
120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been
greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the
situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still
surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of
Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse
in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more
detailed information."

David M. Raup, Curator of Geology
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology"
Field Museum of Natural History
Vol. 50, No. 1, (Jan, 1979), p. 25

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological
exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely
more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been
discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are
filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species. The
availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit
objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What
is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major
groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They
can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection
of the fossil record."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist)
Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems,
4th edition, Master Books, 1988, p. 9

2 Replies

@gungasnake,

How nice of you to bring up 30 year old quotes gunga.

Don't have anything new?

Here is something new for you. An entire section dedicated to "transitional fossils"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

0 Replies

The non evolution of flying birds

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