The Evolution Myth

[sunwaiter]

OH. Since i had understood there was no real use (in terms of discussing the topic here) for me in posting anything that had the pretention to open doors of understanding (mine in the first place) and, why not, a little more humility, i just took as almost a habit to come here from time to time and take a quick look at what was said.

I don't know exactly why Robert Newman got banned, and i guess it's not my business and not in relation to this particular thread. But it seems to indicate that i wasn't getting paranoid when i felt there was no real discussion. Whatever the topic, when people don't hear each other, it's a sad experience to go through and an even sadder experience to witness.

The saddest thing about it is that Robert created this thread and it seems he won't be able to participate again (hope i'm wrong). I repeat what i have said to Robert and Andrew, among other people: i'm glad for having participated in this thread anyway, because anything fuels my mind. Robert made my interest in the evolution topic grew in a way i couldn't have thought of. I opened books that used to go under my nose before. I'm not talking about the bible though, because it seems to me it doesn't have anything to do with science. But even this book i may be reading one day.

Thanks to Pista Gyerek for his very valuable input, and to Andrew for keeping the discussion alive. I have read you with great interest.

Take care.

[Andrew Roussak]

OH. Since i had understood there was no real use (in terms of discussing the topic here) for me in posting anything that had the pretention to open doors of understanding (mine in the first place) and, why not, a little more humility, i just took as almost a habit to come here from time to time and take a quick look at what was said.

I don't know exactly why Robert Newman got banned, and i guess it's not my business and not in relation to this particular thread. But it seems to indicate that i wasn't getting paranoid when i felt there was no real discussion. Whatever the topic, when people don't hear each other, it's a sad experience to go through and an even sadder experience to witness.

The saddest thing about it is that Robert created this thread and it seems he won't be able to participate again (hope i'm wrong). I repeat what i have said to Robert and Andrew, among other people: i'm glad for having participated in this thread anyway, because anything fuels my mind. Robert made my interest in the evolution topic grew in a way i couldn't have thought of. I opened books that used to go under my nose before. I'm not talking about the bible though, because it seems to me it doesn't have anything to do with science. But even this book i may be reading one day.

Thanks to Pista Gyerek for his very valuable input, and to Andrew for keeping the discussion alive. I have read you with great interest.

Take care.

Hi Sunwaiter,

thank you for this post, it is also a great pleasure for me to know that you are still here, hope you are doing well! For Robert, I don't think it was because of this thread, and you have absolutely nothing to blame yourself of, anyway. You were, and are a very polite poster.

So, I would like it very much, to keep the discussion alive as well, but I can only do it stealing the time from myself, hope it is okay that I am not visiting everyday, as Robert ( who seemed to have lived in Internet )

Btw - you have answered my question that time, and I have noticed it only two days later ( the page was turned ). So, I did not respond, not because I wanted to ignore your answer - simply did not notice, seriously. You are mostly welcome, of course.

Regards to you, Pistike , all other participants.
Truly hope to be back tomorrow
Andrew.

[jhnbrbr]

I too can't help feeling a little sad that Robert is gone. Although i disagreed with most of what he said, there was a certain challenge in trying to expose the flaws in his arguments, even if there was no chance whatsoever of convincing him of them! It's a strange irony that someone who refused to accept the concept of extinction is now, in a way, extinct himself. I may even miss him a little.

[MISCHIEVOUS QUOTE DELETED BY AUTHOR]

[Corno Dolce]

Aloha jhnbrbr,

You'll have to excuse me if I find your statement about my being Mr. Newman's great admirer to be churlish in the extreme. Since he is not on this forum anymore I really feel its unfair to label me as an admirer. I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt. My wish is that our Sr. Regulator Krummhorn would go in and redact your comment about my being an admirer. It stigmatises me un-necessarily and I find it un-appealing.

Sincerely,

CD

Ps: I still respect him for his candor and obvious intelligence despite it having ruffled feathers around here.

[greatcyber]

I too, am glad that this thread is still surviving as I look forward with keen interest on opposing points of view. Sometimes one simple phrase uttered by someone else may spur me to consider things that I may have never dreamed of before.

As long as there remains civility, humility and rationality, I ALWAYS enjoy learning something new every day. You can never be too old to learn.

Personally, I don't think it was "this" thread that lead to the expulsion of Robert, but his one-sided rantings in general. Of course, everyone has and should have the right to be entitled to their opinions. It is in how one shares them with the outside world that is a reflection on the true self. I can only hope Robert was humbled by the experience and takes away something positive from the experience. Maybe it will help in his day-to-day interactions with the world in the end.

I have no qualms in agreeing to disagree on any particular subject with another, but I always try and keep an open mind. That is just a life lesson that I learned, albeit the hard way.

Thanks to you all for your continued patience, sharing and consideration. May we all coexist peacefully.

[Pista Gyerek]

I don't think it was "this" thread that lead to the expulsion of Robert, but his one-sided rantings in general. Of course, everyone has and should have the right to be entitled to their opinions. It is in how one shares them with the outside world that is a reflection on the true self. I can only hope Robert was humbled by the experience and takes away something positive from the experience. Maybe it will help in his day-to-day interactions with the world in the end.

Robert seemed to have a sincere love for music. But he also was an overbearing cyber-bully who touted every conspiracy theory under the sun: he started threads not only on creationism and the 9/11 inside job, but also on a unique and preposterous Mozart conspiracy that he evidently hawks throughout the Web. The way he heaped scorn on anyone with the effrontery to question his bold claims is all too common in online debates. In the dealings I've had with conspiracy theorists, this appears to be central to their dynamic. The negative attention they invite with this behavior fuels their sense of righteousness; they tell themselves they're being persecuted for their honesty, instead of disciplined for their rudeness.

I have no qualms in agreeing to disagree on any particular subject with another, but I always try and keep an open mind.

Sage advice indeed.

Regards,

Pistike

[sunwaiter]

Robert seemed to have a sincere love for music.

True, and that's why i love music myself, whatever its form. It has always been and will always remain a wonderful way of making people open themselves and share. Well, it seems it's not enough, but it's better than nothing.

Our own productions can remind us how small we are

[methodistgirl]

Remember my thread "Across the Border"? It didn't get me kicked out of
this forum and it was just as bad when I started with it. I was reading
it up last night. I did apologize for my nearsightedness. He never came
to his senses and say he was sorry. The one thing I won't do is keep
pushing when I finally realize that I Might be wrong.
judy tooley

[Andrew Roussak]

Hello guys,

back again finally. I see this thread had spontaneously evolved in the discussion of Robert Newman's person... My take on that: let us simply stop it. I would normally hate it, to speak about someone who can not hear me and can't respond. But, please try to understand, which kind of person, or kind of mind might be someone, who : has encyclopedial knowledge on various subjects; who has, at best, very questionnable views; who is inclined to believe in various conspiracy theories; who spends obviously all of his time online. Please simply show a bit of understanding, it works always good.
I do not comment the decision of the board , I know that Krummhorn, Robin are very delicate people, but as officials they are responsible for what's going on here. I am only sorry that this all should have happened on MIMF.

I ask you also not to respond and not to quote this post of mine, because I plan to delete it within a week from today.

Sincerely,
Andrew

[Andrew Roussak]

Hi Pistike,

hope it is okay to let you wait - appear as often as I can!

Okay, I see that the discussion must now inevitably follow the familiar route - my next question must be the fossil record, right? That is, if you say "cumulative series of steps" over those millions of years, one would expect to find an uninterrupted row of fossils of these intermediates. Are they here?
There are plenty of fossils of intermediate forms between prehistoric fish and prehistoric land animals. ...

I was just FISHING online and found an interesting quote:

"Although the relationship of the rhipidistians to the amphibians will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, it should be said here that none of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterized the primitive tetrapods."
(Stahl, Barbara J. [Professor of Biology, Saint Anselm College, USA], "Vertebrate history: Problems in Evolution," Dover: New York NY, 1985, p.148)

What may it actually mean? I think the two following takes might be interesting.

An example presented in the low right corner of your scheme, COELACANTH, was believed to be an evolutionary ancestor of tetrapods, that's right. But, it was caught alive in the Indian Ocean in 1938.
It is a very massive deep-water fish, with really bony fins, but it neither uses them for walking, nor it even comes close to the water surface. It did not evolve since Devonian in anything different than it was. Thus it is neither fishapod, nor missing link, nor even an extinct species.

Tiktaalik is a really very interesting and spectacular case. The fossil was found in 2006 in Arctic Canada and was proudly presented as a true missing link between devonian fishes and tetrapods ( that's why fishapods ). So, Internet is really full of evolutionist sites, presenting it as that, and of the creationist sites, stating, of course, the contrary. I have tried to find some analysis of the found , and got here:
http://www.wort-und-wissen.de/index2.../sij132-6.html

Sorry, it is in German, but the schemes represented are quite understandable. The article written by Dr. Reinhard Junker.
The essense in short:
TIKTALIIK was claimed to fill the gap between the first known tetrapods and their fishy contemporaries ( see the scheme ). Analysis of the front extremities of TIKTALIIK shows that they don't show any signs of transformation in the "desired" direction - they are fins, no signs of digits. The same goes to the scull. So, seen from an evolutionary perspective, TIKTALIIK could show, at best, another branch of evolution. But in this case, it does not only not fills the existing gap in the fossil record, but produces another two.
Moreover, the rear extremities of TIKTALIIK, and the tail, were not found. So the reconstruction, as that in Wikipedia , is based on a supposition how it SHOULD LOOK LIKE to fill in the gap. This is important, because it means , actually - could it walk? You know that we need LEGS for walking, these are not ARMS, because legs are attached to the backbone via pelvic bones, and such construction carries, actually , the weight of the body ( by me, by you, by apes, T-Rex....) . The fins of the fish are not of this kind. The logical hypothesis is that the rear fins of TIKTALIIK were not legs as all other details do not show it, and even the reconstruction does not. So, much says to the supposition that it was just a fish species, living by a coastline and feeding of insects etc, like also many modern species do. After this niche had closed ( and what did it look like in Devonian, one can only speculate ), TIKTALIIK had become extinct. That's all.

[quote]

Does Carl Zimmer explain what were the pressures which made the fish to leave its normal environment?

First and foremost, the land was full of plant life that made easy prey for adventurous fish forms.

The evolutionary process is certainly still happening today.

I have some troubles to bring these two points of you together.

First, the land is full of plant and insect life today no less than it was millions of years ago. So, the pressures must be actually the same. There are lots of fish species living, as well - the half of all vertebrates ! There are certainly some adventurous species among them. Can you name some visible examples of fish on its way to tetrapod known today? If you say, evolution ( let us make it clear, it sounds like macroevolution for me ) happens now, as well as in Devonian, the examples must be all-present. Each living species of course prefers it, to live in its own niche. If this niche is being closed for whatever reason, the species would migrate or become extinct, that is what the modern observations show. Why should it have been different millions of years ago?

I can name also , if you want, of course, some examples of really EXTREME pressures, which the known species undergo since thousands of years and still do not show any signs of evolution.

AR:The last question ( for today !) - can you give your opinion on how life has started? Is abiogenesis possible or not? Just interested how you see it.

PG: This question doesn't deal with evolution, strictly speaking. How life initially came about has no real bearing on the question of the common ancestry of all life on Earth.

You are right, it doesn't, sorry I was a little bit provocative

Still, the question was significant for Haeckel, who understood the primitive life as a drop of jelly. It was important for Miller and Urey, who hoped to show in 1953 how the life begun but failed. The question is regarded as secondary by the modern ET, just because it can not answer it. Looks like the materialistic science stumbles at its very first step, and continues to walk further, as if nothing happened.

Very sincerely,
Andrew

[Corno Dolce]

Aloha jhnbrbr,

I very much appreciate your redacting in your posting - you have my thanks and heartfelt appreciation.

Respectfully yours,

CD

[Pista Gyerek]

Andrew,

I was just FISHING online and found an interesting quote:

"Although the relationship of the rhipidistians to the amphibians will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, it should be said here that none of the known fishes is thought to be directly ancestral to the earliest land vertebrates. Most of them lived after the first amphibians appeared, and those that came before show no evidence of developing the stout limbs and ribs that characterized the primitive tetrapods."
(Stahl, Barbara J. [Professor of Biology, Saint Anselm College, USA], "Vertebrate history: Problems in Evolution," Dover: New York NY, 1985, p.148)

What may it actually mean?

Well, it may mean that, in the mind of Professor Stahl, the true intermediates between primitive fish and the earliest tetrapods hadn't yet been discovered. If this was indeed written in 1985, then it was nearly twenty years before the discovery of the Tiktaalik fossil.

But what do YOU think it means, Andrew? Could Professor Stahl, an eminent evolutionary biologist who studied vertebrate evolution until her death in 2004, actually have meant that intermediates between primitive fish and the earliest tetrapods never existed? Did you quote her because you think she meant that evolution is a gigantic hoax?

"Quote mining" is taking a quote out of context to make it seem like an authority is supporting a claim of your that they would never, in fact, support. It's an outrageously dishonest method, intended to claim expert support for a proposition that deserves none. How many times have I seen creationists dig up direct quotes from evolutionists that seem, amazingly, to support creationism? And how many times does it turn out that these scientists (Darwin, Gould, Lewontin, Dawkins, and so forth) were, in fact, quoted in a very misleading way, simply in order to deceive people unfamiliar with the details of empirical inquiry into thinking that evolutionary scientists were publically admitting the weakness of their own case?

Perhaps you're unaware of how competitive and controversial biology is. There are many debates raging in the field as we speak, concerning details of the genetic basis of the evolutionary mechanism, proposed lines of ancestry, the impact of certain events on evolutionary transitions, and many other subjects. However, the biologists debating whether species actually evolve constitute a miniscule, ideologically-motivated, deservedly ridiculed minority in the scientific community.

But maybe it should be your turn to answer questions, Andrew. Where did you get your education in biology? Who do you consider the authorities on natural history? What should we believe about the history of life on Earth? Is evolution just a fraud and a hoax? If so, why do so many people, particularly scientists, affirm the validity of Darwin's theory?

Regards,

Pistike

[Corno Dolce]

Aloha Pistike,

I wish to humbly ask you where you have gotten your education in Biology. I myself have done Graduate work in Astrophysics with a concentration in Cosmology. So no, I'm no expert in Biology but am troubled by scientists and pseudoscientists who, with an eye to make politically charged statements and to support their gravy train feed bag with grants from Uncle Sam and other research funding organizations, inject themselves into the political discourse and, being *covered by this or that political party*, make unscientifically supported statements and grand summations to benefit the latest cause-du-jour of whatever political party or to perpetuate a deceit/conceit.

Just because x-number of scientists claim the validity of Darwin's theory, it does not follow that Darwin's theory has the answer. The world is not going to implode just because Darwin's theory might be invalid - However, it might mean that some scientists will soon be out of a job and politicians and educators will have massive quantities of egg to scrape off their face.

Humbly and Respectfully yours,

CD

[Pista Gyerek]

Hey there, CD,

I'm no expert in Biology but am troubled by scientists and pseudoscientists who, with an eye to make politically charged statements and to support their gravy train feed bag with grants from Uncle Sam and other research funding organizations, inject themselves into the political discourse and, being *covered by this or that political party*, make unscientifically supported statements and grand summations to benefit the latest cause-du-jour of whatever political party or to perpetuate a deceit/conceit.

I'm no expert in biology either, and I think the scientific community is full of vested interests. But I'm troubled by creationists making a buck off the ignorance and bigotry of people who barely understand what evolution is, let alone have a sturdy grounding in philosophy and critical thinking.

Just because x-number of scientists claim the validity of Darwin's theory, it does not follow that Darwin's theory has the answer.

You're right. But we need to recognize the context here: an overwhelming number of scientists affirm the theory. If you're claiming Darwin's theory is invalid on the authority of a vanishing minority of scientists who affirm creationism, you need to explain on what basis you judge this infinitesimal minority more reliable than the majority.

The world is not going to implode just because Darwin's theory might be invalid - However, it might mean that some scientists will soon be out of a job and politicians and educators will have massive quantities of egg to scrape off their face.

Let's not be disingenuous. Darwin's theory is the best explanation we have for the massive amount of fossil, genetic, and morphological evidence that scientists need a framework to understand. Common ancestry and evolution by natural selection form the basis of modern biology.

If there is a superior, coherent, verifiable theory to explain everything the neo-Darwin synthesis does and more, it has not been proposed. I've got no attachment to Darwinism apart from the fact that the theory has been verified by subsequent research: present a better theory and every scientist would be eager to claim it as his own and get to Stockholm for his Nobel prize.

Regards,

Pistike

[Corno Dolce]

Aloha Pistike,

I agree with you about a framework for discussion in using a heretofore standard model with its inconsistencies and all until a better model is agreed upon by the assembled scientific community. In regards to the overwhelming number, what might that number be? What affiliation to institutions of higher learning, received research grants, professional assemblies are these scientists allied with? My gripe is also about the dishonest buck and political score being made off of the seeming ignorance of many civilians.

The question about the validity or invalidity of Darwin's theory will not be settled in your or my lifetime. I know the contentious tone of debate about Faith within the Astrophysics Community and it is very often raw when scientists and researchers are stigmatised because they have a Faith system. I don't check my Faith at the door when I enter the Analysis Room or the office to conduct independent research. I do the Mathematical Physics and verification experiments using the tools afforded me by my education.

Btw, I didn't read about what your background is - if you wish not to share it, I can live with that.

In greatest humility,

CD