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RogerDC

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Günter seems completely unaware of the data I showed you. So I'm wondering why you think he's an expert. He's got religious objections to the fossil record, gentics, and evolutionary development.
Really? Pray tell, what are his “religious objections to the fossil record, genetics and evolutionary development”? I’ve been reading his articles and have yet to come across any “religious objections” at all, so I’m wondering where you got this idea.
Which is the usual reason for rejection of evolution. It’s always religious.
What are you talking about? Gunter Bechly does not reject evolution! On the contrary, he is very much an evolutionist - he believes what the fossil records shows, that life-forms evolved over billions of years. Are you aware that it’s possible to accept evolution without being a Darwinist?
At least Drs. Wise and Wood are honest enough to admit the evidence. Let's check some of Günter's claims:

"And it shows no sign of insect evolution."

Sphecomyrma is an extinct genus of ants which existed in the Cretaceous approximately 79 to 92 million years ago. The first specimens were collected in 1966, found embedded in amber which had been exposed in the cliffs of Cliffwood, New Jersey, by Edmund Frey and his wife. In 1967, zoologists E. O. Wilson, Frank Carpenter and William L. Brown, Jr. published a paper describing and naming Sphecomyrma freyi. They described an ant with a mosaic of features—a mix of characteristics from modern ants and aculeate wasps. It possessed a metapleural gland, a feature unique to ants. Furthermore, it was wingless and had a petiole which was ant-like in form. The mandibles were short and wasp-like with only two teeth, the gaster was constricted, and the middle and hind legs had double tibial spurs. The antennae were, in form, midway between the wasps and ants, having a short first segment but a long flexible funiculus.
Sphecomyrma - Wikipedia

Note the date it was first found. Günter is 53 years behind the curve. And he's an "insect expert?" There are more insect examples, if you want to see them.
You’ve completely misunderstood what that article (cf post 46) says and have misrepresented Bechly’s position. When the article says, “And it shows no sign of insect evolution”, it is referring to Bechly’s finding that the first insects appear suddenly in the fossil record, with no sign of evolutionary ancestors. It’s not referring to what happened after insects appear in the fossil record - the article is not saying Bechly finds no sign of insect evolution after they appear in the fossil record!
These, as your link says, are Cambrian, not Precambrian. As you learned, complex animals appeared long before the Cambrian. And even in the Cambrian, we see evolutionary changes from the early Cambrian to later Cambrian.
For Pete’s sake … When that article (cf post 46) says, “all the major animal phyla appear in the early Cambrian without precursors”, it means those Cambrian animals (found in the fossil deposit in China) appear suddenly in the fossil record, with no evolutionary, Precambrian ancestors.

The article states that the fossils of “136 different kinds of animals”, over a wide diversity of phyla, were found, and that every of them appear suddenly in the Cambrian - ie, with no evidence of evolutionary ancestors in the PreCambrian. That is precisely why the Chinese paleontologists who made these findings criticize Darwinian theory - it fails to explain the sudden appearance of animals in the Cambrian.

Neither I, nor the article I quoted, claim that evolution did not occur after those animals appeared in the Cambrian. You’re barking up the wrong tree, yet again. I, and the folks who wrote the article, accept that evolution occured after animals appear in the fossil record … and we both accept that Darwinian theory fails to adequately explain the fossil record.
 

bbyrd009

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There is no empirical evidence that suggests an elevated oxygen level will produce the evolution of new body plans and novel organs, as seen during the Cambrian explosion, for example.
are you still on that? Thought we had moved on to the dearth of species?

However, there is ample empirical evidence that suggests Darwinists have very vivid imaginations and often attempt to pass off pure fantasy as science.
the arg against that imo is that other scientists will expose them anyway? And wadr at least they present them as "theories" yeh? So you are left to present the "empirical evidence" see, which you have not yet done, not saying you might not have a point, i dont know

but i mean are you going to be trying to establish a 6k year old earth or something in the next breath maybe
Moot point. There wasn't a dramatic increase in oxygen levels in the Cambrian. The one key cause seems to be the evolution of full exoskeletons. That allowed many new ways of life, and the evolutionary radiation that followed is known as the Cambrian explosion.

I suspect that since such organisms are much more efficient predators, there followed an arms race between predator and prey species.
^ "There wasn't a dramatic increase in oxygen levels in the Cambrian."
 
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Yehren

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Human beings are not classed as “soft-bodied” organisms. A “soft-bodied” organism is one which lacks an endoskeleton or an exoskeleton. So some chordates are “soft-bodied” and some are not.

Actually, "soft-bodied" is not a scientific classification. It merely means our bodies are soft. As they are. Hard-bodied organisms have exoskeletons.

Technically, evolution is an observed phenomenon.

Name one person who has observed a bird evolve from a reptile, for example, via the neo-Darwinian process of mutations and natural selection.

Here, you've confused the observed phenomenon of evolution (do you know the proper definition for biological evolution?) with a consequence of evolution, common descent. Remember, just because we'll never see Mt. Everest reduced to a little hill, that does not mean that mountains are not worn down to hills by erosion.

There's no huge gap. The first true vertebrates from the Cambrian were not "fully formed" at all, lacking most elements now found in all vertebrates. But they did have ossified segments (all chordate bodies are divided into segments, something we retain in our nerves and vertebrae) supporting the notochord and spinal chord.

My understanding is that vertebrates with fully-formed backbones appeared suddenly in the Cambrian

The first vertebrates retained a functional notochord, which is vestigial in fully formed vertebrates. Since the genes responsible for ossification affect all segments (chordates, including vertebrates have body segments which are seen in spinal vertebrae and nerves) one would expect all the vertebrae to appear at once. However, the structure of those elements seen in modern vertebrates, was not present. Here is a diagram of the notochord and nerve cord of a chordate, and that of an early vertebrate agnathan:

iu

and there is no fossil evidence of evolutionary ancestors with partial backbones.

Notice the bony elements of early agnathans were attached to the notochord, reinforcing it and strengthening it. Modern agnathans have secondarily lost the ossified elements, and these are only cartilage. In modern vertebrates, the notochord is vestigial and essentially disappears in utero.
 

Yehren

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My understanding is, there are no evolutionary links between the exoskeleton and the endoskeleton, there is no evidence that both lines share a common ancestor, and that the endoskeleton has no evolutionary history at all.

That's mostly wrong. However, skeletons evolved in the two lines long after they diverged. The difference is ancient. Vertebrates are deuterostomes where the blastopore of the gastrula forms the anus, while in protostomes, it forms the mouth. These two clades form the bilatera, animals with bilateral symmetry ( at least in larval form).

Genetics has shown that the same developmental genes that function in protostomes, also work in deuterostomes. The big difference is that chordates are "upside down" relative to arthropods and their kin. If you've ever shelled shrimp, you will see that the digestive tract is above the nerve cord, the opposite of the case in chordates. (chordates include the vertebrates).

The exoskeleton is an adaption from partially-scleritized organisms in the Precambrian.

Geological Magazine
Volume 152, Issue 6
November 2015 , pp. 1145-1148

Ecdysozoan-like sclerites among Ediacaran microfossils
MAŁGORZATA MOCZYDŁOWSKA (a1), GRAHAM E. BUDD (a1) and HEDA AGIĆ (a1)


Abstract

We report the occurrence of organically preserved microfossils from the subsurface Ediacaran strata overlying the East European Platform in Poland, in the form of sclerites and cuticle fragments of larger organisms. They are morphologically similar to those known from Cambrian strata and associated with various metazoan fossils of recognized phyla. The Ediacaran age of the microfossils is evident from the stratigraphic position below the base of the Cambrian System and above the isotopically dated tuff layers at c. 551±4Ma. Within this strata interval, other characteristic Ediacaran microorganisms co-occur such as cyanobacteria, vendotaenids, microalgae, Ceratophyton, Valkyria and macroscopic annelidan Sabellidites. The recent contributions of organic sclerites in revealing the scope of the Cambrian explosion are therefore also potentially extendable back to the Ediacaran Period when animals first appear in the fossil record.

Fully-formed exoskeletons came long after partially-formed exoskeletons.


Creatures with fully-formed endoskeletons appear suddenly in the Cambrian ...

They lacked many, many features of fully-formed vertebrates, as you have seen.

This is entirely consistent with Darwinian evolution, to say the least.

There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that competition for survival between predators and prey produces new body shapes and organs.

No, that's wrong, too. For example, the shells of ammonites become strengthened and more robust after the emergence of mososaurs. Would you like to learn about that?
 

Yehren

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Really? Pray tell, what are his “religious objections to the fossil record, genetics and evolutionary development”? I’ve been reading his articles and have yet to come across any “religious objections” at all, so I’m wondering where you got this idea.

As you learned, "intelligence design" was revealed to be a religious doctrine, by the Wedge Document and by the Dover Trial.

You’ve completely misunderstood what that article (cf post 46) says and have misrepresented Bechly’s position. When the article says, “And it shows no sign of insect evolution”,

I showed you examples of evidence in the fossil record for insect evolution.

it is referring to Bechly’s finding that the first insects appear suddenly in the fossil record, with no sign of evolutionary ancestors.

He should have said "for the origin of insects." There is abundant fossil evidence for insect evolution. However, we do find that the fossil evidence is consistent with the evolution of insects from crustaceans. And genetics has reinforced that finding. Would you like to learn about that?
 

Yehren

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For Pete’s sake … When that article (cf post 46) says, “all the major animal phyla appear in the early Cambrian without precursors”, it means those Cambrian animals (found in the fossil deposit in China) appear suddenly in the fossil record, with no evolutionary, Precambrian ancestors.

We see, for example, Ediacaran animals, like Spriggina:
iu


And early Cambrian animals like
iu


And yes, there are soft-bodied trilobitomorphs:
iu


Neither I, nor the article I quoted, claim that evolution did not occur after those animals appeared in the Cambrian. You’re barking up the wrong tree, yet again. I, and the folks who wrote the article, accept that evolution occured after animals appear in the fossil record … and we both accept that Darwinian theory fails to adequately explain the fossil record.

Well, let's see what an honest and informed YE creationist has to say about that belief:

Evidences for Darwin’s second expectation — of stratomorphic intermediate species — include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwin’s third expectation — of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates — has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacodontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwin’s fourth expectation — of stratomorphic series — has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and Plesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory.
Kurt Wise, Toward a Creationist Understanding of Transitional Forms

The fossil record is powerful evidence for Darwinian theory in other ways, as well. As Wise admits, the numerous transitional series of fossils confirm Darwinian predictions. But even more compelling, we never find any transitional forms where there shouldn't be any. No feathered mammals, no insects with notochords, no slugs with chitinous skeletons.

And genetics confirms these findings.

Another key finding in the fossil record is Darwin's prediction that every transitional organism must have transitional forms that are adaptive to its own way of life. Looking at the many transitional forms between dinosaurs and birds or diapsids and mammals, we find each transitional adaptation is useful for the animal having it.

Another important validation is Darwin's observation that any organism with an adaptation exclusively for the benefit of another species would invalidate his theory. And we see none of those.
 
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RogerDC

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As you learned, "intelligence design" was revealed to be a religious doctrine, by the Wedge Document and by the Dover Trial.
That doesn't answer my question. You claimed Bechly has “religious objections to the fossil record, genetics and evolutionary development”. What are these alleged "religious objections"? Back up your claim with some facts.
I showed you examples of evidence in the fossil record for insect evolution.
As I told you, Bechy s an evolutionist - he is fully aware that insects evolved after they appear in the fossil record.
He should have said "for the origin of insects."
It is quite obvious from the context what he meant.

However, we do find that the fossil evidence is consistent with the evolution of insects from crustaceans. And genetics has reinforced that finding. Would you like to learn about that?
Yes, I would like to learn about that. Sounds like more Darwinian pseudo-science, which is always entertaining.
 

Yehren

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That doesn't answer my question. You claimed Bechly has “religious objections to the fossil record, genetics and evolutionary development”. What are these alleged "religious objections"? Back up your claim with some facts.

As you might know, Gunter Bechly is a fellow of the Discovery Institute. Here's their agenda:

The Wedge Document outlines a public relations campaign meant to sway the opinion of the public, popular media, charitable funding agencies, and public policy makers.

The document sets forth the short-term and long-term goals with milestones for the intelligent design movement, with its governing goals stated in the opening paragraph:


  • "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies"
  • "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
(Discovery Institute, Wedge Document)

Hence, a religious objection, not a scientific one, as established in the Dover Trial, where Discovery Institute Fellow Michael Behe admitted under oath that "Intelligent Design" is science in the same sense that astrology is science. This was a major turning point for ID, which has been fighting a rearguard action against theistic evolutionists ever since.

As I told you, Bechy s an evolutionist - he is fully aware that insects evolved after they appear in the fossil record.

If so, it would seem that he would not have denied evidence for insect evolution. Which is what he did. At best, he seems to have been deliberately vague to make his claim as wide as possible.

It is quite obvious from the context what he meant.

If he had wrote what you said he meant, there would have been no ambiguity. The origin of insects is quite a different story than the evolution of insects. Now that genetic data has filled in much that is missing in the spotty record of insect paleontology, Gunter's story is becoming less and less tenable. It's always a mistake in science to base your argument in what is not yet known.

Yes, I would like to learn about that.

The surprising result that led to us venturing into the insect wing origin debate was that when I knocked-down vg in beetles, I saw a loss of wing tissues (expected) AND effects in segments that did not have wings (unexpected). This project evolved with functional and expression analyses of other critical wing genes in Tribolium, and early in my graduate career I found that beetles have two wing-related tissues in their wingless first thoracic segment (wing serial homologs)2. These two tissues can be independently related back to each of the two wing origin hypotheses, providing the first functional evidence in support of the idea that both of the proposed origin tissues contributed to the evolution of insect wings. This suggested that insect wings have a dual evolutionary origin and provided an opportunity to unify the two historically competing hypotheses.

After wrapping up this project in beetles I was left wondering if having two separate wing-related tissues (one tergal and one pleural) in the wingless segments was a general characteristic for other insects and non-insect arthropods. Could this truly be the ancestral state for wing tissues? I was brainstorming about other organisms in which I could attempt to identify wing homologs when I was invited to attend the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Winter course “Evolution of Complex Systems” (OWECS). At this course, I was introduced to many amazing evolutionary and developmental biology (evo-devo) researchers including Dr. Nipam Patel. I remember sitting (probably fairly jet-lagged due to the time difference) and listening to his talk about the development of an emerging crustacean model and suddenly getting very excited. This crustacean (Parhyale hawaiensis) had a similar body plan to insects (dorsal body wall adjacent to proximal leg structures) and some basic established molecular biology tools, and I remember thinking “I wonder if those large flappy things at the base of the leg (what I now know to be called coxal plates, and not so flappy) are dependent on wing genes?” Just like that, the premise for this project was born.
...
While working in Nipam’s lab I got my first taste of data for this paper: expression pattern of vg and the phenotype of Parhyale vg mutants. Somewhat surprisingly, these data matched what I envisioned when I listened to Nipam’s talk in Okinawa a few years prior. vg was expressed in the proximal part of the leg as well as in the edge of the dorsal body wall. When we knocked out vg, these tissues disappeared (so...yes, those large flappy things are dependent on wing genes). It was one of those rare, eureka moments in science. A moment where everything starts to click into place and you get super excited about your results.
...
The expression and functional data I had from vg aligned nicely with what we had previously seen in the wingless segments of beetles (two separate tissues dependent on wing genes, one tergal and one pleural/proximal leg)2, but was this data enough to support the hypothesis that these structures are the “wings” of a crustacean? This was a question that we asked constantly throughout the evolution of this project: how many genes do you need to establish homology? One didn’t seem like enough, so I started working towards adding data for two more critical wing genes, nubbin and apterous.
...
In the end, this project, which was supposed to consist of looking at expression and function of ONE gene in Parhyale and take just a few months, ended up expanding to look at expression and function of three genes and expression alone of a handful more, and ended up taking about FOUR years. Ultimately, the effort that went into this project was well worth it. In our paper, we were able to show that a gene network similar to the insect wing gene network operates in both the edge of the terga and the proximal leg of Parhyale, suggesting that the evolution of this network precedes the emergence of insect wings. Additionally, it seems that both of these tissues qualify as potential wing homologs in a crustacean – meaning we had found the crustacean “wings”. It is striking to compare the potential wing homologs of Parhyale with those that have been identified in the wingless segments of insects2–8. In both situations, there are two separate tissues dependent on wing genes, one of tergal and one of pleural/proximal leg-related identity. The parallels that can be drawn between our results in Parhyale and the wingless segments of insects appear to support a dual evolutionary origin of insect wings and suggest that novelty (in the case of the novel insect wing) can evolve through a merger of two pre-existing, distinct structures.

The hunt for crustacean wings

Now, there are three conceivable scientific explanations for this ("God mustadunnit" is not a scientific explanation, but a valid religious doctrine for IDers and usually the preferred one for them):

1. Insects evolved from crustaceans, and two separate tissues evolved to form wings.

2. Somehow a huge amount of widely-separated DNA got laterally transferred from a crustacean to an ur-insect without killing the insect thereby, and eventually evolving into wings. This individual was the only surviving member of his class, and gave rise to all other insects. There is no known natural mechanism for such a transfer.

3. Random mutation and natural selection just happened by chance to come up with a lot of identical genes in the two different classes of arthropods. Given the size of these developmental genes, the likelihood of that is about the same as a tornado in a junkyard building a Volkswagen.






 

RogerDC

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well i would lean more toward nature abhorring a vacuum, so to speak, i guess the oxygen ^ would more likely just make bigger flora and fauna? So for the PC explosion i would maybe contemplate that in light of 99% of all the species that have ever existed being extinct now maybe? Seems equally hard to get ones head around anyway.
Environmental oxygen levels have increased greatly since the Cambrian era, so if increased oxygen levels triggered the evolution of scores of animal phyla during Cambrian explosion, how come no new animal phyla have evolved since the Cambrian?
 

RogerDC

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Like understanding why our embryonic development appears to recapitulate evolutionary history. It doesn't really, but we have lots of ancient genes that mutated to functions that are important to our own development, and sometimes it looks that way.
You’re still missing the point - I’m talking about practical scientific uses, not mere theorizing, which is just useless talk. All the points you raise here are not practical scientific uses or have led to any scientific use … they are just theories (talk) about the ancient past.
We have branchial arches, for example, but we never develop gills or gill rakers. Instead, they form other things. This is important in medicine.
Really? How has the fact that our branchial arches don’t “develop gills or gill rakers” proven “important in medicine”?
The history of life on Earth, is primarily known from the fossil record. But genetics has given us a lot of insight into it, and other disciplines such as geology and geochemistry has added information.
What practical scientific use has been provided by “insights” and “added information” about what might have happened millions of years ago?
 

RogerDC

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That depends on a more basic premise of evolutionary theory. In fact, it depends directly on the four points of Darwinian theory.
I didn't ask you for that. I asked you how understanding antibiotic resistance depends on accepting the Darwinian theory that all life evolved from a common ancestor via a process of mutations and natural selection.
 

RogerDC

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Evolutionary development (evo-devo, in slang) informs medicine of many important characteristics of human development and genetics
Name one application of medical science that has resulted from accepting the Darwinian claim that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor via a process of mutations and natural selection. Our knowledge of mutations and natural selection has proven useful, but the Darwinian version of the history of life on earth has proven completely useless in any practical sense.
The great opportunity: Evolutionary applications to medicine and public health
Randolph M Nesse 1 , Stephen C Stearns 2
...To address these questions, we review current and potential applications of evolutionary biology to medicine and public health. Some evolutionary technologies, such as population genetics, serial transfer production of live vaccines, and phylogenetic analysis, have been widely applied. Other areas, such as infectious disease and aging research, illustrate the dramatic recent progress made possible by evolutionary insights. In still other areas, such as epidemiology, psychiatry, and understanding the regulation of bodily defenses, applying evolutionary principles remains an open opportunity.
Of course there are practically useful “evolutionary applications”, but that is not what I asked for. I asked for practical uses for the Darwinian version of the HISTORY of life on earth. Darwinian tales about what happened millions of years are totally useless to medicine and public health.
If you've ever been given antibiotics to take at home, you probably got some detailed instruction on intervals to take them, and to be sure to take all of them. That's because antibiotic protocols (designed to reduce bacterial adaptation to antibiotics) are based on Darwin's four points. It's how Sir Alexander Flemming accurately predicted overuse of antibiotics would lead to the evolution of resistance.
… none of which rely on Darwinian tales about what happened millions of years ago, which is my point.
No, that's false. He'd be back in the early 1800s, as far as his understanding of biology goes.
Name one practical use of biology that requires a biologist to accept the Darwinian theory that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor.
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution"
Theodosius Dobzhansky - world class biologist and Christian
Nothing in applied biology requires accepting that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor. Evolutionary principles form the basis of applied biology, but evolutionary history is totally useless to applied biology.

Incidentally, in his essay, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution”, Dobzhansky makes the absurd Darwinist claim that human embryos have “gills” … but the “gills” are not gills at all - they're simply folds of skin! Embarrassing.
That's what this guy said:
iu


Trofim Lysenko was a quack scientist in the Soviet Union. Because Darwinian theory contradicts Marxist philosophy, Stalin banned Darwinism from the Soviet Union. Many geneticists and other biologists were imprisoned or killed. Lysenko's anti-Darwinian ideas were implemented throughout the Soviet Union, leading to crop failures and famines. The damage to Soviet biology took decades to overcome after Stalin's death.



Would have been if millions hadn't died because of his hare-brained attacks on Darwinism.
So what's your point? … nobody knew how to be a successful farmer before Darwin?
That's directly observable. Mutation and natural selection. Even many creationist organizations now admit that much. Many even admit the fact of speciation, and sometimes, even a limited amount of common descent. They can hardly deny it, since it's observable, and testable.
You're talking nonsense. An macroevolutionary sequence of fossils alone cannot possibly verify that it is the result of mutations and naturally selection.

The process of a bird evolving from a reptile via a process of mutations and natural selection is not observable, therefore the Darwinian theory that attempts to explain that alleged macroevolution cannot be tested.
 
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RogerDC

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RogerDC said:
We cannot “learn about and understand” how fossil B evolved from fossil A
Actually, we can. For example, Ambulocetus natans, tells us why Dorudon has horizontal flukes instead of vertical flukes like fish. Would you like to learn about that? There are many, many other such cases, if you'd like to see more.
Please do. I want to know how we can "learn and understand" the process responsible for a bird evolving from a reptile simply by examining fossils.
"If you take Mount Everest and erode it into a hill, only then will I believe you can "learn about and understand" how erosion happens."
Comparing erosion to reptile-bird evolution is a rather poor argument. We can learn and understand the erosion of mountains because that process and the mechanism responsible for it are readily observable.
We can’t learn and understand how a bird evolved from a reptile, because that process cannot be observed and neither can the mechanism responsible for it - we can’t even claim that it is a fact that a bird evolved from a reptile via a biological process.
 
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RogerDC

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As you might know, Gunter Bechly is a fellow of the Discovery Institute. Here's their agenda:

The Wedge Document outlines a public relations campaign meant to sway the opinion of the public, popular media, charitable funding agencies, and public policy makers.

The document sets forth the short-term and long-term goals with milestones for the intelligent design movement, with its governing goals stated in the opening paragraph:


  • "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies"
  • "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
(Discovery Institute, Wedge Document)
You seem to have overlooked the possibility that the folks at the Discovery Institute oppose Darwinism for purely scientific reasons, not because of something they read in the Bible (I can assure you they are considerably more intellectually sophisticated than your garden-variety YEC fundamentalist). Discovery Institute promote intelligent design, not because of some interpretation of the Bible, but because that is what the scientific evidence points to - a Creator God. What is wrong with that? “Ever since the creation of the world his [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). /////////// If someone then attempts to convince others that the scientific evidence points to a creator God (intelligent designer) and not to a purely materialistic (natural) cause, what is wrong with that? Are you against evangelization? Is it a sin to point out evidence of a Creator in nature?
Hence, a religious objection, not scientific one
That is untrue. Discovery Institute doesn’t oppose Darwinism for religious reasons, but for only scientific reasons. They consider Darwinian theory to be an inadequate explanation for the history of life on earth, and their opinion is based purely on scientific evidence, not on anything religious. If they felt Darwinian theory was a satisfactory scientific explanation, they would not oppose it. I have reading their articles for years and have never come across a “religious objection” to Darwinism.
 

RogerDC

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Actually, "soft-bodied" is not a scientific classification. It merely means our bodies are soft. As they are. Hard-bodied organisms have exoskeletons.
As far as the science of paleontology is concerned, a “soft-bodied organism” has neither a exoskeleton, nor an endoskeleton. Your layman’s definition is irrelevant to this discussion.
Do you know the proper definition for biological evolution?
A “proper” definition? There are many definitions for biological evolution out there, but the one I settled on is, “a change in gene frequency within a population”.
Technically, evolution is an observed phenomenon … you’ve confused the observed phenomenon of evolution … with an a consequence of evolution, common descent.
A bird descending from a reptile is “evolution”, but the process responsible for this alleged evolution cannot be observed. So your claim that “evolution is an observed phenomenon” is a half-truth … not all forms of evolution can be observed.
There's no huge gap. The first true vertebrates from the Cambrian were not "fully formed" at all, lacking most elements now found in all vertebrates. But they did have ossified segments (all chordate bodies are divided into segments, something we retain in our nerves and vertebrae) supporting the notochord and spinal chord.
Vertebrates appear suddenly in the Cambrian - my understanding is that there is no evidence of partial-vertebrates that could fit into the gap between invertebrate chordates and vertebrate chordates.
Notice the bony elements of early agnathans were attached to the notochord, reinforcing it and strengthening it. Modern agnathans have secondarily lost the ossified elements, and these are only cartilage. In modern vertebrates, the notochord is vestigial and essentially disappears in utero.
That’s interesting, but embryology as “evidence” of evolution has always struck me as quack science.
 

2 Chr. 34:19

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Human embryos of different kinds of animals are distinct from conception onwards, and modern research has confirmed this. In 2007 a group of researchers from University College London, UK and University of Virginia, USA, published a study of the process where a single layer of cells forms into three layers during the early stages of embryonic development. The three layers give rise to different organs and structures in the body. The top layer forms the nervous system and skin; the middle layer the musculo-skeletal and blood circulation systems; the bottom layer the inner organs.

researchers found that in birds and mammals the middle layer, called mesoderm, is formed from cell movements in the centre of the embryo under the influence of a growth factor from a cell layer called extra-embryonic endoderm – a cell layer found in birds and mammals but not fish and amphibians.

This process is initiated very early in embryonic development, before the formation of a structure named the primitive streak, which defines the centre axis of the body. This means the development of the body is different in birds and mammals compared with fish and amphibians even before any basic body tissues and structures are formed. (Reference: Nature vol. 449, pp1049-1052 doi:10.1038/nature06211)

Michael Richardson and colleagues photographed embryos of many animals and compared them with Haeckel’s theory. He found great variation between the embryos, and most looked nothing like Haeckel’s drawings of embryos that were supposedly at the same stage of development. (Reference: Anatomy and Embryology vol. 196, No. 2 (1997), pp91-106, doi: 10.1007/s004290050082)
 

RogerDC

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RogerDC said:
There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that competition for survival between predators and prey produces new body shapes and organs.
No, that's wrong, too. For example, the shells of ammonites become strengthened and more robust after the emergence of mososaurs. Would you like to learn about that?
You're clutching at straws. That is simply evidence of the natural selection of a pre-existing genetic variation within a species … no different to the light/dark moth scenario. It is not evidence that competition between predators and prey produces new body plans or novel organs.
 

RogerDC

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The origin of insects is quite a different story than the evolution of insects. Now that genetic data has filled in much that is missing in the spotty record of insect paleontology, Gunter's story is becoming less and less tenable. It's always a mistake in science to base your argument in what is not yet known.



The surprising result that led to us venturing into the insect wing origin debate was that when I knocked-down vg in beetles, I saw a loss of wing tissues (expected) AND effects in segments that did not have wings (unexpected). This project evolved with functional and expression analyses of other critical wing genes in Tribolium, and early in my graduate career I found that beetles have two wing-related tissues in their wingless first thoracic segment (wing serial homologs)2. These two tissues can be independently related back to each of the two wing origin hypotheses, providing the first functional evidence in support of the idea that both of the proposed origin tissues contributed to the evolution of insect wings. This suggested that insect wings have a dual evolutionary origin and provided an opportunity to unify the two historically competing hypotheses.


After wrapping up this project in beetles I was left wondering if having two separate wing-related tissues (one tergal and one pleural) in the wingless segments was a general characteristic for other insects and non-insect arthropods. Could this truly be the ancestral state for wing tissues? I was brainstorming about other organisms in which I could attempt to identify wing homologs when I was invited to attend the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Winter course “Evolution of Complex Systems” (OWECS). At this course, I was introduced to many amazing evolutionary and developmental biology (evo-devo) researchers including Dr. Nipam Patel. I remember sitting (probably fairly jet-lagged due to the time difference) and listening to his talk about the development of an emerging crustacean model and suddenly getting very excited. This crustacean (Parhyale hawaiensis) had a similar body plan to insects (dorsal body wall adjacent to proximal leg structures) and some basic established molecular biology tools, and I remember thinking “I wonder if those large flappy things at the base of the leg (what I now know to be called coxal plates, and not so flappy) are dependent on wing genes?” Just like that, the premise for this project was born.
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While working in Nipam’s lab I got my first taste of data for this paper: expression pattern of vg and the phenotype of Parhyale vg mutants. Somewhat surprisingly, these data matched what I envisioned when I listened to Nipam’s talk in Okinawa a few years prior. vg was expressed in the proximal part of the leg as well as in the edge of the dorsal body wall. When we knocked out vg, these tissues disappeared (so...yes, those large flappy things are dependent on wing genes). It was one of those rare, eureka moments in science. A moment where everything starts to click into place and you get super excited about your results.
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The expression and functional data I had from vg aligned nicely with what we had previously seen in the wingless segments of beetles (two separate tissues dependent on wing genes, one tergal and one pleural/proximal leg)2, but was this data enough to support the hypothesis that these structures are the “wings” of a crustacean? This was a question that we asked constantly throughout the evolution of this project: how many genes do you need to establish homology? One didn’t seem like enough, so I started working towards adding data for two more critical wing genes, nubbin and apterous.
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In the end, this project, which was supposed to consist of looking at expression and function of ONE gene in Parhyale and take just a few months, ended up expanding to look at expression and function of three genes and expression alone of a handful more, and ended up taking about FOUR years. Ultimately, the effort that went into this project was well worth it. In our paper, we were able to show that a gene network similar to the insect wing gene network operates in both the edge of the terga and the proximal leg of Parhyale, suggesting that the evolution of this network precedes the emergence of insect wings. Additionally, it seems that both of these tissues qualify as potential wing homologs in a crustacean – meaning we had found the crustacean “wings”. It is striking to compare the potential wing homologs of Parhyale with those that have been identified in the wingless segments of insects2–8. In both situations, there are two separate tissues dependent on wing genes, one of tergal and one of pleural/proximal leg-related identity. The parallels that can be drawn between our results in Parhyale and the wingless segments of insects appear to support a dual evolutionary origin of insect wings and suggest that novelty (in the case of the novel insect wing) can evolve through a merger of two pre-existing, distinct structures.
The hunt for crustacean wings

Now, there are three conceivable scientific explanations for this ("God mustadunnit" is not a scientific explanation, but a valid religious doctrine for IDers and usually the preferred one for them):

1. Insects evolved from crustaceans, and two separate tissues evolved to form wings.

2. Somehow a huge amount of widely-separated DNA got laterally transferred from a crustacean to an ur-insect without killing the insect thereby, and eventually evolving into wings. This individual was the only surviving member of his class, and gave rise to all other insects. There is no known natural mechanism for such a transfer.

3. Random mutation and natural selection just happened by chance to come up with a lot of identical genes in the two different classes of arthropods. Given the size of these developmental genes, the likelihood of that is about the same as a tornado in a junkyard building a Volkswagen.
Once again, you’ve missed the point. I’m not arguing against evolution - God could well have created insects from crustaceans. The point is, there is no fossil evidence of evolutionary links between crustaceans and insects - insects appear suddenly - which presents a problem for Darwinism.
 

RogerDC

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Michael Richardson and colleagues photographed embryos of many animals and compared them with Haeckel’s theory. He found great variation between the embryos, and most looked nothing like Haeckel’s drawings of embryos that were supposedly at the same stage of development. (Reference: Anatomy and Embryology vol. 196, No. 2 (1997), pp91-106, doi: 10.1007/s004290050082)
Apparently, Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings are still shamelessly passed off as factual in some modern biology textbooks. You can’t trust the cult of Darwinism - the whole point of which is to deceive people into believing that life on earth arose all by itself and no God was needed to create it.
 
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