Evolution? How?

Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nda_OSWeyn8&search=leprechaun

Neo-Irish evolutionary theory in the making.

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LOL, Wilso, great whatever-that-line-under-the-dashes-at-the-bottom-of-a-post-is-called.

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Hi Farmerman,

Isn't fossil evidence for an extinction rather like an argument from silence? 'We don't see any X,Y or Z , so therefore they must not have existed at this time period.'

We have discussed this before. The absence of a fossil in a given strata doesn't equal the nonexistence of the creature during a given period of time.

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rl

Quote:

Isn't fossil evidence for an extinction rather like an argument from silence? 'We don't see any X,Y or Z , so therefore they must not have existed at this time period.'

. As Ive finally understood your convoluted argument, yours is the argument of silence because you explain that animals were succesfully avoiding from becoming fossils throughout a very long existence (lets say Cambrian through the pleistocene for woolly mammoths)

No woolly mammoth appears in the fossil record until about the Pleiocene and then they go extinct in the Pleistocene to early Holocene. Yet they successfully avoided fossilization for over 500 million years. Any data to support that ?
As I said before, the fossil record is more a record of the LIFE of species, an individual of which had unluckily been captured in an unfortunate act that gave us a fossil of its body. Yet you feel comfortable tht critters developed a stealth existence so that they only left fossils at the approximate time their species went extinct? All the time prior, they(according to you) existed but were not fossilized. Naaah, Ill pass on the brilliance of that argument.
How about the horshoe crab? Its been in existence since the Silurian and exists till today. Some modifications due to adaptive structuring had occured in the ensuing 400 + million years. HOWEVER, weve got Horshoe crabs in the fossil record the entire time and all over the world, same thing for oysters and clams (but not brachiopods or trilobites). No please dont accuse me of an"argument from silence" when your trying to have us believe in "stealth existence" of over 40 BILLION species.
You do have a problem in logic and substantiating a claim there rl. I dont know where you take it from a claim to some degree of credibility.

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Quote:

Microevolution (change within a species ) would have to include the development of major structural changes and internal organs which did not exist previously. Since these have never been observed to occur (just as 'macroevolution' has not), it really seems a distinction without much of a difference, as evolutionists themselves will often admit.

Quite the contrary -- if you start cutting into a few organisms, you might be startled be that absolute lack of fundamental variety in terms of their internal structures. Take vertebrates -- generally the slowest reproducers in nature. Give me a list of structures found in some vertebrates with no homologues in others?

(On the other hand, there is a rather long list of features -- entire organs, even -- that develop and then disappear in the course of development of the mammalian embryo. Why would any designer have an embryo grow a set of fish kidneys, then a set of amphibian kidneys, and then a set of mammalian kidneys? Why not just save energy and potential for disaster and grow the final set straight off?)

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This is an honest question: Can soneone please tell me how evolution accounts for fingerprints? No two humans have or have ever had the same set of finger prints. No I cannot prove this, but I doubt that until I came up with the post anyone would have bothered to think to argue with me about that claim. I would like to know how evolution accounts for several billions sets of fingerprints. Evolution in and of itself is improbable enough, but the improbability of evolution causing the improbabillity of several billion setss of fingerprints seems tooo preposterous for anyone to deny.

The.......

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TheUndonePoet wrote:

This is an honest question: Can soneone please tell me how evolution accounts for fingerprints? No two humans have or have ever had the same set of finger prints. No I cannot prove this, but I doubt that until I came up with the post anyone would have bothered to think to argue with me about that claim. I would like to know how evolution accounts for several billions sets of fingerprints. Evolution in and of itself is improbable enough, but the improbability of evolution causing the improbabillity of several billion setss of fingerprints seems tooo preposterous for anyone to deny

Fingerprints are not completely defined by genetics. They are a function of cell growth and conditions around those cells when they start building the structure. It's the same reason two genetically identical oak trees don't grow identically, the environment they are growing in also defines them.

You may dismiss the argument of fingerprint uniqueness improbability from any relevance to the viability of evolutionary theory. It simply doesn't apply.

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rosborne,

Um...........

Isn't pretty much every aspect of becoming one species or another a part of cell growth? I must be missing something. A person's genes are in part responsible for determing cell growth, so while fingerprints are perhaps the cause of cell growth it must be in essence the result of genetics.

The..........

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farmerman wrote:

rl
Quote:
Isn't fossil evidence for an extinction rather like an argument from silence? 'We don't see any X,Y or Z , so therefore they must not have existed at this time period.'

. As Ive finally understood your convoluted argument, yours is the argument of silence because you explain that animals were succesfully avoiding from becoming fossils throughout a very long existence (lets say Cambrian through the pleistocene for woolly mammoths)

No woolly mammoth appears in the fossil record until about the Pleiocene and then they go extinct in the Pleistocene to early Holocene. Yet they successfully avoided fossilization for over 500 million years. Any data to support that ?
As I said before, the fossil record is more a record of the LIFE of species, an individual of which had unluckily been captured in an unfortunate act that gave us a fossil of its body. Yet you feel comfortable tht critters developed a stealth existence so that they only left fossils at the approximate time their species went extinct? All the time prior, they(according to you) existed but were not fossilized. Naaah, Ill pass on the brilliance of that argument.
How about the horshoe crab? Its been in existence since the Silurian and exists till today. Some modifications due to adaptive structuring had occured in the ensuing 400 + million years. HOWEVER, weve got Horshoe crabs in the fossil record the entire time and all over the world, same thing for oysters and clams (but not brachiopods or trilobites). No please dont accuse me of an"argument from silence" when your trying to have us believe in "stealth existence" of over 40 BILLION species.
You do have a problem in logic and substantiating a claim there rl. I dont know where you take it from a claim to some degree of credibility.

No, I've not argued that certain animals avoided becoming fossils.

Perhaps they are fossils that we haven't found.

I don't think we've found all the fossils there are by a long shot, do you?

I do think that to argue that 'because we haven't seen their fossils, they didn't exist' is an argument from silence.

To form a conclusion that something wasn't there, 'based on what we don't see' is highly speculative at very best. I hold open the possibility that it could have been there.

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TheUndonePoet wrote:

I must be missing something. A person's genes are in part responsible for determing cell growth, so while fingerprints are perhaps the cause of cell growth it must be in essence the result of genetics.

Yes, that's why all fingerprints have the same concentric nature to them. The variation is down to environment. Genes are not the be all and say all of who we are (I hope that's the correct phrase) and can be dependent on the environment (and when I say environment, I mean the gene's immediate environment, including that of the human being's immediate environment).

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Wolf,

I completely agree, but that does not account for how a limited variation of environments throughout historical epochs could have resulted in several billion fingerprints and no copies.

The..........

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Leaving aside for the moment the idiocy of that contention, one is bound to ask, given your previous posting, if you expect us to believe that your imaginary friend would so readily account for what is only a failure of understanding on your part?

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TheUndonePoet wrote:

Wolf,

I completely agree, but that does not account for how a limited variation of environments throughout historical epochs could have resulted in several billion fingerprints and no copies.

The..........

Nonsense - snowflakes are nowhere near as complex as are humans - or other critters - and snowflakes don't repeat identical patterns either. For just about any critter which has a fleshy or keratinous interface with its environment - paw pads, palms, fingers, soles, and toes, flippers and bellies, hooves, scales, whatever, where tissue meets the environment, the environment acts upon the tissue.

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TheUndonePoet wrote:

Wolf,

I completely agree, but that does not account for how a limited variation of environments throughout historical epochs could have resulted in several billion fingerprints and no copies.

The..........

How so? Have you proved it mathematically? Furthermore, seeing as you do not know how fingerprints are formed, how can you know it's impossible for supposedly "limited variation of environments" to result in several billion different fingerprints?

I've just found out that the overall general flow or pattern of friction ridges on human hands and feet is governed primarily by the height and position of the volar pads formed before birth. It is only the formation of the volar pads that are determined by genetics, not the patterns on the skin itself.

So, it would seem to me, that the environment within the womb is responsible, as well as genetics and the expression of said genetics. That's a larger number of factors than you can imagine. The environment in each womb differs from woman to woman. The flow of the amniotic fluid around the baby may influence the ridge formation. The mother's diet may influence it. The genetics, obviously. The growth of the volar pads, which is not only dependent on the mother's diet but also on how much oxygen the mother is breathing in.

You may think, big deal, that's five different factors. But you forget, how many options within each factor? Oxygen levels come in gradients. Genes are large structures that can afford to have a large number of different mutations that can effect the size of the growth of the volar pad.

http://www.ridgesandfurrows.homestead.com/Friction_Skin_Growth.html

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Come on, timber, we all know god designs all them snowflakes to be unique.

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Timber and Wolfe, thank you do much for your insight. I am not beyond reason, and your posts (esspecially wolfe's) are reasonable enough. It is nice that when a creationst asks a question some one is kind enough to simply answer it and not use it as an attack.

BTW, Setanta, I am certainly glad you weren't my biology professor. There is a far cry between an argument and genuine curiostiy. I think it might serve you well to treat people as you would want to be treated. I wold never attack you as a person for asking a question about something you don't understand, and I don't appreciate your continual attacks on me.

Wolf and Timber, once again thank you. I completely agree. It is nice to get a simple answer to genuine curiosity.

The............

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Cicerone,

Please don't join the same company as Setanta. His responses to my genuine curiosity are much of the reason I have found that evolutionist are terrible to talk to and why I continue to cling to the little I know about it. Maybe if evolutionist would learn to speak more gently creationists might be a little more willing to listen.

The..........

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TUP, It's really not a matter "what little you know about evolution." Most of the time, people respond to questions about crationism or evolution without attacking the questioner when the question is posed in a way that doesn't redicule evolution as a "theory" or "it's not proven." Those kind of statements shows a lack of education and a locked mind. If one doesn't base their questions based on a conclusion already assumed by the questioner, they will usually get a polite and direct response. Try it.

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Cicerone,

I am not TUP. Please show me where I posted the question in such a way as to suggest that fingerprints must prove creation. That is only your assumption. BTW, you might want to review my posts on this, in which I agreed with Wolfe and Timber. They were polite and direct, and I was polite and direct back. I ask for the same respect from you.

The.........

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You're TUP to me! I'm just lazy - like you are with Wolfe and Timber's names . I didn't say I made any assumptions about your post; I was only talking in generalities. As you have already acknowledged, Wolfe and Timber answered your q's. If Set was more aggressive in his response to you, I'll let him answer for himself.

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