Flight feathers: simplest disproof of evolution

@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

So far, nobody has answered the basic question here: What kind of a mutation is going to change down feathers into flight feathers, only on a creature's arms where they will be needed for flight after other mutations change those arms into wings?

Yes, we've answered it multiple times on many threads. You're just not listening to the answer.

No single mutation changes down into flight feathers. And nothing in the theory of evolution says it does or should. You don't understand evolution.

Flight feathers DID develop on all limbs, not just arms. It just so happens that those animals became extinct and only the front-winged organisms are still around. You would not have been able to pose this challenge 100 million years ago because there WERE animals with flight feathers on all four limbs.

Microraptor

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/microraptor-431x300.jpg

And lastly your whole argument against flight feathers is based on the invalid assumption that every aspect of their evolution was only useful for flight, when that simply isn't the case. Feathers became specialized in many different ways long before some of those specializations started to benefit the gliding behavior which developed in some animals. The flight specializations are only the last in a long sequence of gradual specializations, each one beneficial to the organism in different ways along the way.

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@McGentrix,

Quote:

I am not familiar with the fruit fly experiments. What were they doing with them?

They were attempting to prove the concept of macroevolution, i.e. the idea of producing functional new KINDS of creatures via mutation and selection. They xspeeded the process up enormously by creating large numbers of mutations themselves i.e. artificially and by using fruit flies as a subject since fruit flies breed new generations every couple of DAYS; running continuous experiments on fruit flies over several decades will involve more generations of fruit flies than there have ever been of anything resembling humans on this world.

They did that for decades and subjected those flies to everything in the world known to cause mutations, heat, cold, bright light, shock, every sort of radiation, and combined the mutants thus produced every possible way, and all they ever got was fruit flies, sterile freaks, and creatures which returned, boomerang-like to the norm for a fruit fly after two or three generations. They never got any new kind of creature, just fruit flies.

The results were so unambiguous that a number of prominent scientists renounced evolution in consequence including the famous case of Richard Goldschmidt who, afterwards, complained that he was being subjected to something like the ten-minute hate sessions of 1984 by colleagues.

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/10mut10.htm

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@Romeo Fabulini,

Romeo Fabulini wrote:

Incidentally here's Dawkins deep detailed explanation of how birds evolved, based on years of deep scientific study-
“My guess is that both bats and birds evolved flight by gliding downwards from the trees" (Climbing Mt Improbable p 113/14)

In other words he's saying animals were in the habit of throwing themselves out of trees and getting splatted, until one miraculously sprouted wings!
Haha he's a funny guy..

We've been through this before Fabulini, Dawkins is talking about GLIDING, not SPLATTING. And you must not be a good observer of squirrels or you would know that they throw themselves out of trees all the time and land pretty hard sometimes. So it doesn't take a big stretch of the imagination to see how having ANY type of body structure (like extra skin between the toes or legs) might help slow that fall, or even develop a bit of a glide over the eons.

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@rosborne979,

It just so happens that all of the recent Chinese proto-bird fossils have turned out to be frauds, just like the "Piltdown Man(TM)". You're not getting away with that crap any more.

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=chinese+bird+fossil+fraud&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

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Is there any fossil evidence of early "prototype" birds that didn't quite make it into the air because of a design flaw?
Same with any other early animal, it's as if they suddenly appeared on earth fully functioning and ready to go, so where are the fossils of the ones that didn't make it?

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@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

The following is a minimal list of entire categories of evidence disproving evolution:

Not one thing in that list is valid. We've been through this so many times with you it's painful.

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@rosborne979,

EVERYTHING on that list is valid. I've been through this so many times with you it's painful. I post the thing occasionally for the benefit of people who CAN get something out of it, and not for you.

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@Romeo Fabulini,

Quote:

Is there any fossil evidence of early "prototype" birds that didn't quite make it into the air because of a design flaw?
Same with any other early animal, it's as if they suddenly appeared on earth fully functioning and ready to go, so where are the fossils of the ones that didn't make it?

There is this...

Consider how close anything comes to any sort of a lizard-to-bird process in real life. A coelurosaur trying to evolve its way to being a flying bird would need roughly a dozen systems which it does not have.

Nonetheless, chickens have all of those things and you might wonder what keeps chickens from ever completely regaining normal flight capabilities. The basic answer is that the chicken as we know it started out as a little two-pound jungle fowl (related to pheasants) and was bred into a 6-lb. meat animal, but still has the 2-lb bird’s wings. Geese are as heavy as chickens and fly easily enough because they have the wings necessary for a 7-lb bird.

Consider that man raises chickens in gigantic abundance, and that chickens were never kept in cages until recent times. Consider the numbers of such chickens which must have escaped in all of recorded history...

Look in the sky overhead: where are all of their wild-living descendants?? Why are there no wild chickens in the skies above us???

In other words, if there's any chance whatsoever of a non-flying creature evolving into a flying bird, then surely the escaped chicken, close as it is, could RE-EVOLVE back into being a flying bird. They're only missing the tiniest fraction of whatever is involved.

They've got wings, tails, and flight feathers, the system for pivoting flight feathers, the light bone structure, flow-through lungs, high-efficiency heart, beaks, and the whole nine yards. In their domestic state, they can fly albeit badly; they are entirely similar to what you might expect of an evolutionist's proto-bird, in the final stage of evolving into a flight-worthy condition.

According to evolutionist dogma, at least a few of these should very quickly finish evolving back into something like a normal flying bird, once having escaped, and then the progeny of those few should very quickly fill the skies.

But the sky holds no wild chickens. In real life, against real settings, real predators, real conditions, the imperfect flight features do not suffice to save them.

In real life, if you ever lose the tiniest part of some complex trait or capability, you will never get it back. In the real world, if you lack the tiniest part of some complex trait or capability, then, other than possibly via some genetic engineering process, you will never get it.

The basic question is: How in hell is some velociraptor supposed to make it the thousand miles, if history proves that a creature which amounts to the final stage of such a development cannot make it the final yard of such a process?

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@gungasnake,

Yes, even some scientists speculate a "Creator" must be at work-

"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved.
Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being?
Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
George Greenstein (astronomer),1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27

"There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming"
-Paul Davies (British astrophysicist), The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability To Order the Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, p.203.

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@Romeo Fabulini,

Romeo, you and Gung do indeed have valued arguments. It does seem that evolution is mathematically unlikely while the very existence of thinking beings seems to suggest a kind of "plan". However, don't further random examples of evolution seem to pop up everywhere

For instance, within just a few of our own lifetimes European birds have grown darker, obviously to better blend in with the smoke. As for the "plan," I can't explain it myself but I'm sure further developments in reasoning and their effect on the language, especially breaking down its barrier between concrete and abstract, will suggest that Her providence is an entirely natural and necessary process, just as She is. So am I pushing Her existence

Not exactly. My vision within apodictical existential pantheism gives you that choice: "God" is a term you may or may not wish attach with complete impunity; be our guest

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@gungasnake,

I just revisited this site after 2 days and aIm surprised that you've dug up that old batch of tired old fraudulent arguments about fruit flies, Haldane etc etc etc. Weve gone over them so many times and you've NEVER EVER argued them or even tried to debate them. You've only disappeared for a few days to then reappear and repost the same **** without any underpinning.
Im actually tired of trying to talk sene to you because I think your mind is clamed shut.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

They were (by using fruit flies) attempting to prove the concept of macroevolution

That's bullshit. They were trying to understand all kinds of mutation, mostly lethal ones an fruit flies have one of the simplest genomes (At the time they did the first experiments (in the 1930s) they didn't understand doodly about genomics and even the structure of DNA, They looked on everything as mere MEndelian genetics , one mutation at a time crossed with dominance or recessiveness. Times were simple. Gunga is still dwelling in them. I think his needle is stuck in 1935

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@gungasnake,

Only one fossil was found out to be a fraud and it was being hawked to museums by a fossil fabricator. This ONE fosil had been ased on several others that were all real specimens. Gunga , youre making more bullshit stuff up again.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

Nonetheless, chickens have all of those things and you might wonder what keeps chickens from ever completely regaining normal flight capabilities.

Humans have only domesticated ONE genus of the GAlliformes (Chicken-like birds). The root genus of chickens were African wild hens that hve diversified into several other species , such that the domesticated birds couldn't mate with them.
Artificial selection is just like nat selection, its usually a permanent state (consider the wild v domestic turkey) The wild turkey ahs several species and subspecies based on their environmental adpatations whereas domestic turkeys cant even breed without help from us.

Quote:

then surely the escaped chicken, close as it is, could RE-EVOLVE back into being a flying bird. They're only missing the tiniest fraction of whatever is involved.
[/ quote]DOLLOs LAw, sattes just the opposite. Try not arguing about stuff you've only learned about from reading Creationist web sites

Quote:
According to evolutionist dogma, at least a few of these should very quickly finish evolving back into something like a normal flying bird,
It says NOTHING of the sort. This is just another gunga bullshit dropping layed out there to try to convince the folks who don't have any dogs in the fight.
AT least don't lie gunga, Jeezus, for some Christian who wants others to believe his piety, you are a bunko artist.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

What kind of a mutation is going to change down feathers into flight feathers, only on a creature's arms where they will be needed for flight after other mutations change those arms into wings? What is the difference between believing in that sort of thing and believing in magic?

I wonder why down vests are good for keeping one's core warm and don't need sleeves to keep the arms warm in order to survive cold weather.

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@parados,

I wonder if we must type stuff in braille for gunga to read?

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

It does seem that evolution is mathematically unlikely while the very existence of thinking beings seems to suggest a kind of "plan".

Evolution is not mathematically unlikely, it's actually mathematically inevitable. And nothing suggests a plan. You need to update your understanding of things Dale.

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@gungasnake,

Quote:

gangasnake Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events. That stands everything we know about mathematics and modern probability theory on its head. There is no way to view believing in such a system as respectable any more.

No event, as in ZERO, has a zero probability of occurring.
How likely is it that one day, long ago, the earth stood still, as told in the Bible?

Science says it has little chance, BUT, some number greater than ZERO.
Science says every possible event has a probability of occurring, that is greater than zero.
Get used to it.

Your understanding of 'infinite' is also weak.

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Can we prove that there is no such thing as goal oriented mutations, based on an inherent intelligence in living matter? This would have nothing to do with any divine presence or hand in the design, just that mutations could naturally orient towards greater functionality?

Meaning that even when some bacteria have a supposed natural immunity to an antibiotic, and then those bacteria are the survivors of an antibiotic, and get to reproduce, so the bacteria regains its foothold in a host, could it NOT be a natural immunity, but rather a goal oriented mutation that stymies the antibiotic?

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My evil twin has pointed out to me that the word "possible" was not meant to be there.
Corrected:
"Science says every event has a probability of occurring, that is greater than zero."

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Flight feathers: simplest disproof of evolution

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