Dinosaurs Evolved Into Birds!! Really??

[janfar]

Slartibartfast you are right Dawkins like anyone else is capable of making a mistake.

One interesting thing Dawkins said is that when he was studying for undergraduate degree in Oxford a young American researcher came into his class utterly disproved his professor's theory on a number of things. The professor walked up the young man and shook his hand and said my good man I want to thank you I have been wrong these 15 years and they all clapped their hands loud and they were all rejoicing that scientific truth had been advanced. Even though that old man had years invested into that theory he was happy it was disproved and scientific truth had succeeded.

Thats the difference with Dawkins. Unlike some bias American scientists like who Ken Ham used as reference, Dawkins do not take the word of humans he only goes based on Evidence and scientific truth.

This is what separates Dawkins from the nut jobs. He does not care what you "believe" like the scientist who invented the MRI scanner a great invention but went onto say the world is 5000 years old because he "BELIEVES" it based on "FAITH" and a book.

What one believes is irrelevant from what is the truth. I am pretty sure the people of North Korea thinks their great leader King Jong II is the reincarnation of Christ. This does not make it true...

But yes back on topic I would love if bluefete would give me his theory on how we all came about and so I can compare it to what we currently know.

You sounding as fanatical as a bible thumper, you know that right.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

Just because they believed in a God does not mean they were right. Name dropping doesn't change and facts.

:/, english hard, I'm saying you don't have to believe in evolution to be a scientist as evident in those individuals.

you are correct that one does not believe in evolution to be a scientist.

However refusing to accept the truth like in this case can significantly hold back your true potential and it really belittles the human mind if you refuse to believe in Evolution.

its like saying the scriptures were right and the sun revolves around the earth and the earth is flat and the earth is 5000 years old and we are the center of the universe.

Just imagine if people really believed these things were true there would be no science no technology no nothing we would still be living in the stone age. Why bother doing anything in this world if you can simply pray and it will all be fixed just have faith?

Why even do an operation to save your life in a hospital? just pray

[Slartibartfast]

Just because they believed in a God does not mean they were right. Name dropping doesn't change and facts.

:/, english hard, I'm saying you don't have to believe in evolution to be a scientist as evident in those individuals.

Lol @ a random "and" in my comment. True, because not all scientists deal with evolution anyway so you can get scientists from all walks of life.

If you presuppose that on a Tuesday at 4pm, 14 billion years ago, nothing exploded into and organised everything, then 4 billion years ago on a stormy day on planet Earth, some inanimate objects became animate, then you would need a theory of evolution or better.

But if you have an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause, an eternal being creating an organised universe...theories seem to be an attempt to clap with one hand tied behind your back.

*sigh* Days are relative to the planet's rotation about the sun in only our solar system. I also suggest you read "A Universe from Nothing". There is proof of the "Big Bang" in the background cosmic radiation as well as the quantities of heavier elements present in the universe today. Also note that according to Biology, the organism must have at least one cell to be considered alive. However, there are a lot precursors to the cell being formed. Remember the cell has a lot of features within it and would have taken a while to evolve. So there were many precursors to "life" in a transition zone between inorganic chemical reactions and a uni-cellular organism.

Now about the other stuff you said, is there any evidence to back it up? It seems your are talking in opposite to make it impossible to disprove by directly contradicting yourself "Unmoved mover... uncaused cause..."

What information are you using to back this up?

[TRAE]

Aye Effective i copying this over here too cause like you eh take meh on in the next ched:

Richard Dawkins' ideas must be rationalised as coming from a human- have you never seen another person make mistakes? have you seen a perfect person with the perfect arguments making statements that were still relevant years upon years without facing criticism due the it not being concise as it should and dependant on the rationalisation of crowds of followers devoted to that thinking?

To be Atheist and Evolutionist- you must prove that your point is most sensible and rational with proof, how can we prove a point against something that has been the subject of doubt due to the unavailability of hard evidence. we had dinasaurs then we didnt have them- we have bones- and we have fake bones. we have bibles and qurans and we have new found rational thinking doubting the existence of such times and making it on the same level as a literature novel. 2014 and we still cannot explain ancient technology on the most ancient of buildings. But WE RATIONALISE, thats the issue- we fight to explain what we cannot understand.

No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.
If materialism is true, then all beliefs can be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes.
Therefore, if materialism is true, then no belief is rationally inferred.
If any thesis entails the conclusion that no belief is rationally inferred, then it should be rejected and its denial accepted.
Therefore materialism should be rejected and its denial accepted.
Victor Reppert

Naturalism essentially states that nature is a closed system in which all events within the system are explainable (or are explainable in principle) in terms of the natural order. Thus, naturalism excludes any idea of “god” since the divine does not lie within the total system. If one accepts these presupposition then all events, including that of thought, must be explainable in purely natural/material terms. In short, all events must be the result of mechanical processes linked in a casual chain of events that could be traced back to the very beginning of the universe, if one were so inclined.

The trouble for the Naturalist comes into play when one considers the event of human thought. Since thoughts are events, all of our thoughts should be fully explainable in mechanistic terms, and not according to a person’s free-agency. But any thought which is not guided by what is “true” but guided rather by mechanistic, physical necessity is not rational. Hence, Naturalism, philosophically speaking, slits its own throat.

Again, if our thoughts are the inevitable play of firing neurons in our brain set in motion by causal necessity then what we think would be the result of whatever the total system delivered to us, and not because it accorded with “truth” necessarily. If the claims of Naturalism are held with consistency, one would have to concede that belief in Naturalism occurs only because nature has determined it (sort of an atheist’s equivalent of Calvinism). And if one arrives at his philosophy not because he chose it, but rather because it was all the total system would allow, then Naturalism is, philosophically, self-defeating.
Eric Hyde

Here is a famous misquote from your Dawkins:
"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!"

When the full quote is:

" Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell."


http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/...soncor.pdf

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

So TRAE do you believe in Evolution as the most realistic possibility?

Let us agree it ain't perfect but would you believe in it over all other options we currently have?

[TRAE]

So TRAE do you believe in Evolution as the most realistic possibility?

Let us agree it ain't perfect but would you believe in it over all other options we currently have?

Firstly - I am not religious, i choose to be spiritual- spiritualism in my case is not tied to 1 particular god but a way of thought

As that is outta the way- if we are to believe in evolution then what's our reason for being here? why do we love, why fight, why steal and kill, why cry, why hurt? if there is no reason for us other than here by means of an accident that science cannot recreate in a test environment, let alone an unstable one then what is humanity and why complain about the trend its going. we should accept that we are here for no reason- why? because that's science- a controlled environment with controlled subjects.

My thought now:
In the absence of new age thinking and logic- our communities were better set up- we were actively engaged in society and with our surroundings. Our natural animalistic tendencies created our dominance and partnered with religions, we adopted a belief and something to live for. We learnt respect and courage in the absence of our new found safe zones. Look at life today and tell me that a world without spiritualism is better because now more than ever before have we seen an uprise in evolutionism. temples, churches, mosques etc. are lacking youth, and the ones there are there for other reasons.

Are we better off?

[SMc]

my left penis hurts..

[Slartibartfast]

That argument has a few fallacies that some quick google searches would show.

1. There is no correlation between spirituality or religion and quality of life so us being better or worse off right now doesn't really have anything to do with religion or spirituality.

2. What is wrong with being here for no reason? Do you assume we must be a reason because we are here? Everything is science points to us as the end not the means. So we are here for a because of a lot of reasons, but we are not necessarily here for anything.

Take that how you will, it can be either devastatingly depressing or extremely liberating. Take a moment to sit down and think about how many behaviors and beliefs are just social constructs. Eliminate those and then work from there. Anything that is not a social construct but true to life should be constant throughout history, unaffected by religion, race, culture or time period and tell me what you come up with.

But in the mean time, I'll be here waiting... on an Habit7 or Bluefete to give me a direct answer and full explanation of an alternative theory to evolution or the big bang.

[Country_Bookie]

Whether u believe in evolution or creation, u need to have faith in the theories, since neither side will ever be able to provide definitive proof that what they believe is what actually happened.

[Habit7]

If you presuppose that on a Tuesday at 4pm, 14 billion years ago, nothing exploded into and organised everything, then 4 billion years ago on a stormy day on planet Earth, some inanimate objects became animate, then you would need a theory of evolution or better.

But if you have an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause, an eternal being creating an organised universe...theories seem to be an attempt to clap with one hand tied behind your back.

*sigh* Days are relative to the planet's rotation about the sun in only our solar system. I also suggest you read "A Universe from Nothing". There is proof of the "Big Bang" in the background cosmic radiation as well as the quantities of heavier elements present in the universe today. Also note that according to Biology, the organism must have at least one cell to be considered alive. However, there are a lot precursors to the cell being formed. Remember the cell has a lot of features within it and would have taken a while to evolve. So there were many precursors to "life" in a transition zone between inorganic chemical reactions and a uni-cellular organism.

Now about the other stuff you said, is there any evidence to back it up? It seems your are talking in opposite to make it impossible to disprove by directly contradicting yourself "Unmoved mover... uncaused cause..."

What information are you using to back this up?

LOL


I don't know what the hymnal has over that Church of St. Dawkins but science is yet to prove something coming from nothing. Prior to evolution the leading secular explanation for nature was Spontaneous Generation. This was proven false but it seems that all we have just done is push it back prior. The Big Bang doesn't explain something from nothing, its starts off with preexisting something that explodes into an organised everything.

In one unicellular organism there is more complexity than New York City. There is no evidence of inorganic chemicals becoming an organic animate cell.

Science tells us that every body in motion must have a source that set in motion. Every reaction must of a cause. Therefore the search for this unmoved mover, uncaused cause will produce an infinite regress unless it terminates with an eternal, immaterial being. The argument of who that being is carries us into theology thus science chooses to be secular.





Why is it when you question evolution the white knights of science make the discussion religious and not admit at least that the theory may be lacking in that particular area in question?

[bluefete]

I like this fish which lives at a point in the ocean that does not encourage evolution. Or maybe it is in the genes.

Whichever, it shows that not every creature "evolves" in the manner that is provable.

The 'living fossil' coelacanth fish left behind by evolution




A deep-sea fish which became known as a “living fossil” has not changed in appearance since before the time of the dinosaurs with the help of an extraordinary genome that is barely evolving, a study has found.

The coelacanth, which lives in deep-sea caves off the coast of Africa, was once known only from its fossils and so was thought to have gone extinct at least 70 million years ago until a recently-dead specimen was discovered by South African fishermen in 1938.

It is one of the few species to have hardly changed in tens of millions of years and now scientists believe this physical stability is mirrored in the coelacanth’s genome – the 3 billion “letters” of its DNA code.

“We found that the genes overall are evolving significantly slower than in every other fish and land vertebrate that we looked at. This is the first time that we’ve had a big enough gene set to really see that,” said Jessica Alföldi, a research scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Massachusetts.

Charles Darwin first coined the term “living fossil” to describe species that have endured unchanged due to limited competition with other animals. However, Dr Alfoldi said that the description is not always helpful because it suggests a relic from the past that has been brought back to life.

“It's not a living fossil; it’s a living organism. It doesn’t live in a time bubble; it lives in our world, which is why it’s so fascinating to find out that its genes are evolving more slowly than ours,” she said.

Coelacanths grow about four feet long and have conspicuously fleshy fins that resemble the limbs of four-legged land animals with backbones, the vertebrate “tetrapods” such as frogs, lizards and mammals. This and their ancient lineage suggested they may be closely related to the first fish that made the evolutionary transition from sea to land.

Scientists have speculated as to whether the unchanging physical appearance of the coelacanth was truly because it was evolving slowly, or whether its DNA was somehow evolving just as rapidly as other species.

The complete coelacanth genome shows that the genes do indeed match the fish’s appearance in terms of slower evolution, the researchers say in a study published in the journal Nature.

The genes of the coelacanth have a lower rate of “substitution” – a type of mutation – than other animals with backbones, which may reflect the fact that they do not need to evolve quickly because they live in the relatively unchanging environment of deep-sea caves where there are few predators, the researchers say.

“We often talk about how species have changed over time. But there are still a few places on Earth where organisms don’t have to change, and this is one of them,” said Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, scientific director of the Broad Institute’s vertebrate genome biology group, a co-author of the study.

“Coelacanths are likely very specialized to such a specific, non-changing, extreme environment – it is ideally suited to the deep sea just the way it is,” Dr Lindblad-Toh said

A genome analysis also found that the coelacanth is unlikely to be directly descended from the first fish to walk on land. A more likely candidate is the lungfish, which are closely related but have a much more complicated genome, the scientists said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 77129.html

[SMc]

whats your point?

[bluefete]

That argument has a few fallacies that some quick google searches would show.

1. There is no correlation between spirituality or religion and quality of life so us being better or worse off right now doesn't really have anything to do with religion or spirituality.

2. What is wrong with being here for no reason? Do you assume we must be a reason because we are here? Everything is science points to us as the end not the means. So we are here for a because of a lot of reasons, but we are not necessarily here for anything.

Take that how you will, it can be either devastatingly depressing or extremely liberating. Take a moment to sit down and think about how many behaviors and beliefs are just social constructs. Eliminate those and then work from there. Anything that is not a social construct but true to life should be constant throughout history, unaffected by religion, race, culture or time period and tell me what you come up with.

But in the mean time, I'll be here waiting... on an Habit7 or Bluefete to give me a direct answer and full explanation of an alternative theory to evolution or the big bang.

So all life is random. Everything in the universe is random. Then there should be no purpose to our existence. We cannot be here for any reason other than a random occurrence of a sperm hitting an egg.

That speaks to our total lack of control over anything.

If we can only discover the "death" gene and turn it off then our lives will have true meaning.

[bluefete]

whats your point?

Read it again!!!

Evolution is not all its made out to be!!

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

Ok so what do you all have to say about the Catholic Church admitting that we evolved from Neanderthal? yes they got it wrong its apes but you know nah they close.

The proof is in this video the cardinal said he believes in Evolution

I suggest anyone in doubt please watch this video its only 4 minutes and well worth it.

[bluefete]

I wonder if the Cardinal understands what evolution is?

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

^ yes he seems like a well educated man.

He also admits that the earth is no 5000 years old and science was always right in being billions of years old. If the Catholic Church can admit to Evolution being a real possibility and more so than Adam and Eve then whats so wrong about it?

What better source to get our information from? for years now the Catholic Church has said adam and eve was never real.

LOL at Bill O Riley saying Evolution is Fascism AHAHHAHAHAA forward it to 1:10 ROFL

And hear how Dawkins responds "FASCISM???????" LOL

[meccalli]

The Pope started to read Quran in the vatican, i think that ought to shine some light on their theology and whatever else the heck they believe in cause it sure ain't canonical. Catholic church is pure secularism, so its no surprise lol.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

This is the video where it was revealed that the Catholic Church and the Pope admitted adam and eve was never real.

Dawkins destroy the pope in this video after the pope blamed Atheist for bad things in society and the pope blamed Atheism on Hitler. But lucky Dawkins educated and knew Hitler was a Catholic and he destroy that pope.

If the Catholic Church say Evolution is real and Adam and Eve is not then we cannot question this, the pope is the authority of Christianity. He has a team of catholic scholars that decipher the bible properly better than the rest of us. So I think we should take the word of the Church here.

This video below best explains it all.

[bluefete]

If you presuppose that on a Tuesday at 4pm, 14 billion years ago, nothing exploded into and organised everything, then 4 billion years ago on a stormy day on planet Earth, some inanimate objects became animate, then you would need a theory of evolution or better.

But if you have an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause, an eternal being creating an organised universe...theories seem to be an attempt to clap with one hand tied behind your back.

*sigh* Days are relative to the planet's rotation about the sun in only our solar system. I also suggest you read "A Universe from Nothing". There is proof of the "Big Bang" in the background cosmic radiation as well as the quantities of heavier elements present in the universe today. Also note that according to Biology, the organism must have at least one cell to be considered alive. However, there are a lot precursors to the cell being formed. Remember the cell has a lot of features within it and would have taken a while to evolve. So there were many precursors to "life" in a transition zone between inorganic chemical reactions and a uni-cellular organism.

Now about the other stuff you said, is there any evidence to back it up? It seems your are talking in opposite to make it impossible to disprove by directly contradicting yourself "Unmoved mover... uncaused cause..."

What information are you using to back this up?

LOL


I don't know what the hymnal has over that Church of St. Dawkins but science is yet to prove something coming from nothing. Prior to evolution the leading secular explanation for nature was Spontaneous Generation. This was proven false but it seems that all we have just done is push it back prior. The Big Bang doesn't explain something from nothing, its starts off with preexisting something that explodes into an organised everything.

In one unicellular organism there is more complexity than New York City. There is no evidence of inorganic chemicals becoming an organic animate cell.

Science tells us that every body in motion must have a source that set in motion. Every reaction must of a cause. Therefore the search for this unmoved mover, uncaused cause will produce an infinite regress unless it terminates with an eternal, immaterial being. The argument of who that being is carries us into theology thus science chooses to be secular.


Why is it when you question evolution the white knights of science make the discussion religious and not admit at least that the theory may be lacking in that particular area in question?

That is it right there!!

Science does start with pre-existence. The scientists are just afraid to say so because it leads back to a Creator.

So, Duane has consistently failed to answer the question as to the origin of the matter that caused the big bang.

Was matter always in existence or was there a beginning prior to the big bang?

[bluefete]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -unlocked/

'Coelacanth' Genome Unlocked

The genes of this fish, sometimes called a living fossil, reveal much about the origins of tetrapods, the evolutionary line that gave rise to amphibians, birds and mammals

Apr 17, 2013 |By Chris Woolston and Nature magazine

coelacanth

Flickr/Tetsushi Tsunemi

The South African fisherman who pulled a prehistoric-looking blue creature out of his net in 1938 had unwittingly snagged one of the zoological finds of the century: a 1.5-meter-long coelacanth, a type of fish that had been thought to have become extinct 70 million years earlier.

Since then, scientists have identified two species of coelacanth, one African and one Indonesian. With their fleshy, lobed fins — complete with bones and joints — and round, paddle-like tails, they look strikingly similar to the coelacanths that lived during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs still roamed Earth.

Now, an international team of scientists has sequenced and analyzed the genome of the African coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae; the findings are reported on page 311.

Like lungfish, the other surviving lineage of lobe-finned fishes, coelacanths are actually more closely related to humans and other mammals than to ray-finned fishes such as tuna and trout. Ancient lobe fins were the first vertebrates to brave the land, and the coelacanth genome is expected to reveal much about the origins of tetrapods, the evolutionary line that gave rise to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, says lead author Chris Amemiya, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “The coelacanth is a cornerstone for our attempt to understand tetrapod evolution,” he says.

Ending one long-standing argument, analysis of the coelacanth genome clearly shows that it is not the closest living fishy relative to tetrapods, Amemiya says: that honor belongs to the lungfish. However, he adds, the lungfish genome is unlikely to be sequenced any time soon because it is much larger and more complicated than that of the coelacanth.

Although coelacanths are often called “living fossils”, these fish haven’t really been frozen in time, says co-author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a comparative genomicist at Uppsala University in Sweden. Comparison of protein-coding genes in coelacanths with those of cartilaginous fishes shows that the coelacanths have been steadily accruing DNA changes.

But the rate of change has been remarkably slow. The latest analysis shows that the genes of modern coelacanths can themselves be considered living fossils, says James Noonan, a geneticist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Scientists already had hints of the coelacanth’s sluggish evolution. In a 2012 study, researchers in Japan and Tanzania compared the DNA of the African and Indonesian coelacanths. Specifically, they looked at HOX genes, which help to guide embryonic development (K. Higasa et al. Gene 505, 324–332; 2012). Even though the two species separated, by one estimate, perhaps 6 million years ago, their genes are remarkably similar. For these particular genes, the difference between the two species of coelacanth was about 11 times smaller than that between the HOX genes of humans and chimps, two species that parted ways perhaps 6 million to 8 million years ago.

Slow to change

It is impossible to say for sure, but the slow rate of coelacanth evolution could be due to a lack of natural-selection pressure, Lindblad-Toh says. Modern coelacanths, like their ancestors, “live far down in the ocean, where life is pretty stable”, she says. “We can hypothesize that there has been very little reason to change.” And it is possible that the slow genetic change explains why the fish show such a striking resemblance to their fossilized ancestors.

The analysis showed that not all parts of the coelacanth genome are slow to evolve. The genome has a large number of transposable elements — non-coding parts of the genome that have an important role in gene regulation — that have been moving around in the genome at a relatively rapid pace. Non-coding DNA could be a significant source of evolutionary change, Lindblad-Toh says. But Amemiya adds that, for now, the role of non-coding DNA in speciation is “speculative”, and its significance in coelacanth evolution is not clear.

As expected, the genome holds clues to the genetic changes behind the transition from a lobed fin to a tetrapod limb, Amemiya says. For example, the analysis found that coelacanths and tetrapods share a regulatory gene sequence that helps to promote limb development. But other findings came as a complete surprise. The fish is the first vertebrate found to lack genes for immunoglobulin-M, an almost universal immune-system protein. Instead, it has two genes for a distantly related immune protein that evidently “pick up the slack”, he says.

Further analysis of the genome is bound to reveal much about our own distant past, adds Noonan. “It will allow us to identify the genetic drivers of tetrapod evolution, the genes and regulatory elements that are responsible for the vertebrate land transition.”

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on April 17, 2013.


Comments

littleredtop April 17, 2013, 7:48 PM

What evidence is there that the coelacanth or any other fish chose to "brave" land and eventually evolve into a monkey or any other land dwelling animal? There is no such evidence - only a theory devised by people who could not otherwise explain their existence here on Earth. Yet, science makes this claim as though it were a fact. This is what happens when people accept the teachings of others and don't seek out the truth on their own. There is no room for opinions, assumptions, guesses, theories or "slight of hand" in science. Science should only deal with cold hard facts.
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Blobby April 17, 2013, 7:56 PM

littleredtop, you could try reading the article being discussed here. It presents exactly the kind of evidence you seem to think doesn't exist.
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leaf6 April 17, 2013, 8:12 PM

I don't believe coelacanths and their relatives chose to go to the land. They didn't really have that choice. In order to evade competition in deeper waters, they progressively moved inland, while at the same time they progressively evolved from one thing to another to another.

I'm particularly fascinated by the application of gene sequencing in this field. A couple years ago this wasn't possible.
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RSchmidt Blobby April 17, 2013, 9:00 PM

littlebonehead is an anti-science troll. He is a right wing religious fanatic that posts idiotic comments on any article that the religious right considers blasphemous; evolution, climate change, alternative energy, gravity. He has the scientific literacy of a child raised by wolves and the general intelligence of the fish shown above, though I would bet on the fish. He demonstrates the excessive generosity of statements such as; human beings are an intelligent species. But I guess there exceptions to every rule. They say that, if you could teach a million chimps to type, one would produce the works of Shakespeare, all the others would still make more sense then this guy.
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RSchmidt leaf6 April 17, 2013, 9:11 PM

@leaf6, the line that produced coelacanths did not evolve into tetrapods but other lobed-finned fish did. You can think of them a cousins to tetrapods. The term "chose" is used euphemistically. The ancestors of tetrapods likely lived in dense Devonian swamps where crawling through the tangled plants may have been more efficient that trying to swim through them much like newts and salamanders do today, they later used this ability to make short journeys from one pool to another to evade predators, lay eggs and hunt.
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RSchmidt April 17, 2013, 10:29 PM

@bgrnathan, your post is astonishingly idiotic for someone who has taken the time to create a website about the subject. Perhaps that is because you have not actually taken any time to understand evolution and instead wasted your time burying your head in some bronze age myths. Your post is so full of ignorant comments that have already been addressed by every book on evolution that I don't know where to start.

First off, there is no such differentiation between macro and micro evolution except in the deluded minds of creationists. There is no switch in the genome that permits one kind of change but prevents others. The DNA of one organism differs from the DNA of any other organism only by the number and order of base pairs. If you can change one base pair, you can change them all.

In regards to fins from flippers, all you have demonstrated is your inability to understand the subject which is no surprise since it is obvious you have made no attempt to understand the subject. Feet likely evolved in tetrapods long before they were terrestrial, helping them navigate dense swamps. It is much easier to push brush out of the way with a foot than with a flipper even if it is only partly a foot.

Your claim that common genes do not prove common ancestry only a common designer would only make sense if all the genes we carry fit our design, but they don't. For example, cats have the same gene we have for detecting sweet taste except their gene has mutated and doesn't work. That is no problem in cats because they are strict carnivors but why would god give all creatures broken genes? Why not just not include the broken gene?

Why would god give us virus or other pseudo-genes? Its like me randomly throwing letters into a story.

Why would god have our recurrent laryngeal nerve take such a circuitous route to its target? That's why we get hiccups. The configuration makes sense in a fish but not in tetrapods.

Why would god run the cabling for our vision through the middle of our visual field?

Why would god run males' urethra through their prostate which typically swells in half of men over 60?

In short, if you actually study biology and genetics you will find no evidence of a creator, rather your will find the results of trial and error and modification. A good example is this; if my 5 year old niece brought me a picture she drew of the space shuttle I would be very impressed if I could identify wings, but if an engineer brought me the same picture I would think he was an idiot. If god did in fact engineer life, he is an idiot.
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Frishy April 17, 2013, 10:59 PM

I was fascinated by coelacanths as a child. As much as for what they are (ancient fishy like things) as how to pronounce their name.
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way2ec April 18, 2013, 12:25 AM

As I was reading the article I was thinking if the Coelacanths, as "living fossils", might shed light on how various animals (and plants) were able to survive the K/T event 65 million years ago, perhaps as deep sea dwelling animals. Turtles came through that event as well, but how? And why aren't they considered "living fossils"? Since many animals were able to survive, many relatively unchanged, some parts of the planet were less affected than others, but which parts, and do the survivors provide "evidence" as to planetary recovery? Then I get to the comment section. Littleredtop goes off again demanding "facts" and states "There is no room for opinions, guesses, theories or 'slight of hand' (or fin, lobe or limb?) in science". And here I was thinking that theories were the very stuff of science. I assume that rules out speculation, inferences, deductions, and hypotheses as well. Is there any "room" for questions? A few comments down and we are introduced to the GD God (Genetic Designer) who I assume is the same "guy" who designed or "engineered" colliding galaxies, viruses, and cancers, let alone innumerable species now extinct, and me wondering about my appendix, tail bones, and hair in strange places where the light of intelligent design doesn't shine . And that commentator states "Genetic and biological similarities between species are no proof of common ancestry". HUH? RSchmidt also responds to the GD god of engineered life with an impressive list, cables in the middle of eyeballs, hiccups, and urethras squeezed in old swollen prostate glands. If we were created in "God's image", idiot is still in the running but geez what a sense of humor, what a trickster to put dinosaur bones in the ground to test our "faith", what grand (intelligent?) design putting two of every species on Earth in an ark (including 40 days and 40 nights food?) and then releasing them to find their way back to Australia, the Americas, and leaving Coelacanths in the deep seas with genetic clues to the evolution of tetrapod limbs some 6000 years earlier, give or take a few hundreds of millions of years. Oh, and if God is a "he" how are women intelligently designed or engineered in "His" image, just wondering what with no room for "chance", just "cold hard facts", or am I mixing my sciences, designers, and engineers. And to think we started this round with Coelacanths.
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RSchmidt way2ec April 18, 2013, 1:01 AM

"why aren't they considered 'living fossils'", that term has always puzzled me as well. There are a large number of organisms that have been relatively "unchanged" from even before the time of the dinosaurs. From what I understand, the term living fossil is given to creatures that we know from fossils before we discover them alive. That is certainly the case with the Coelacanth, though the fossil species is much smaller. The fact is, all species alive today have been evolving regardless of how much they look like ancient species. If dinosaurs were alive today (non-avian dinosaurs) they would have evolved too and would be no more "living fossils" than homo sapiens.

The terrestrial animals that survived the K-T extinction tended to be small, burrowing creatures with varied diets. They were able to take refuge from climate extremes in their burrows and quickly switch food sources as the ecosystems around them abruptly changed. People often think that mammals survived the extinction unscathed but a great many species of mammals also disappeared at this time.

The K-T extinction was one of many with the greatest being the Permian-Triassic extinction that wiped out 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species compared to the 75% of all species lost during the K-T extinction. Hopefully the Anthropocene extinction event won't be as bad as those.
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siddartha999 RSchmidt April 18, 2013, 1:02 AM

Hey! don't insult my fish friends by associating them with little red troll... 'though you are correct to "bet on the fish" !
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[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

Bluefete, The great American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss has a book on the origins of the big bang, it came from nothing. Look at it this way the further back in time you go the simpler and more primitive everything gets its a perfect rewind. Its therefore logical to believe that it came to a point so simple it was nothing, however Krauss has stated the word "Nothing" is not what we originally taught it to mean in the English language. Nothing is in reality something.

You will need a Phd in Theoretical Physics to understand the underlying equations to this and everything about it. But if you have to discuss biology still then there is no chance of understanding quantum physics.

Blue how far are you willing to go to understand it? you will need up to a Phd in Theoretical Physics from a world class university as I suggested in an earlier post. For now I suggest we all stick to evolution and other intermediate branches of biology.

PS here is a little hint, want to see proof of the Big Bang still in existence today?

turn on your TV and remove the antenna, the static on the screen is the remains of the big bang.

[bluefete]

If the Catholic Church say Evolution is real and Adam and Eve is not then we cannot question this, the pope is the authority of Christianity. He has a team of catholic scholars that decipher the bible properly better than the rest of us. So I think we should take the word of the Church here

WHAT??????????????????????

The Catholic Church is the bastion of mis-information and has been so for hundreds of years. I would love to get my hands on some of the books they have hidden away in the Vatican library.

[bluefete]

Bluefete, The great American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss has a book on the origins of the big bang, it came from nothing. Look at it this way the further back in time you go the simpler and more primitive everything gets its a perfect rewind. Its therefore logical to believe that it came to a point so simple it was nothing, however Krauss has stated the word "Nothing" is not what we originally taught it to mean in the English language. Nothing is in reality something.

You will need a Phd in Theoretical Physics to understand the underlying equations to this and everything about it. But if you have to discuss biology still then there is no chance of understanding quantum physics.

Blue how far are you willing to go to understand it? you will need up to a Phd in Theoretical Physics from a world class university as I suggested in an earlier post. For now I suggest we all stick to evolution and other intermediate branches of biology.

PS here is a little hint, want to see proof of the Big Bang still in existence today?

turn on your TV and remove the antenna, the static on the screen is the remains of the big bang.

There is cause and there is effect (no pun intended)! That is basic in physics.

If you are saying that the big bang came from nothing then you are saying that matter came from nothingness and that still leaves a burning question:

How can science explain the origins of matter from nothingness without referencing a Creator?

Krauss seems to be playing smart with foolishness in my opinion. Something is something and nothing is nothing! You cannot cross-breed the two.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

bluefete I think there is hope after all. You refuse to take the word of people and hearsay just like that I think this shows some sign that you are heading towards the path of reason and atheism.

Therefore in return of this I will bestow upon you my most motivated video/song that helped me break free of the shackles of superstition etc I think this video will help you embrace science as it as helped me aswell. The greatest anthem of mankind's triumph during the space race and science.

And with that I done for the while as i have some things to do, see you guys next few months.

[bluefete]

LOL! The sarcasm is unmistakeable! Nice anthem though.

Atheism? Definitely not.

Have fun on your sabbatical.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

LOL if thats the case hold 2 more

[Slartibartfast]

So all life is random. Everything in the universe is random. Then there should be no purpose to our existence. We cannot be here for any reason other than a random occurrence of a sperm hitting an egg.

That speaks to our total lack of control over anything.

If we can only discover the "death" gene and turn it off then our lives will have true meaning.

In your sarcasm you have hit the nail on the head. I'm just saying this is one possibility that should be explored. And turning off the death gene (assuming it's possible) would not give life any extra meaning, or any meaning at all if there is none. <--- Again, this is not fact, just a thought I find interesting a worth looking into.

[Slartibartfast]

LOL


I don't know what the hymnal has over that Church of St. Dawkins but science is yet to prove something coming from nothing. Prior to evolution the leading secular explanation for nature was Spontaneous Generation. This was proven false but it seems that all we have just done is push it back prior. The Big Bang doesn't explain something from nothing, its starts off with preexisting something that explodes into an organised everything.

In one unicellular organism there is more complexity than New York City. There is no evidence of inorganic chemicals becoming an organic animate cell.

Science tells us that every body in motion must have a source that set in motion. Every reaction must of a cause. Therefore the search for this unmoved mover, uncaused cause will produce an infinite regress unless it terminates with an eternal, immaterial being. The argument of who that being is carries us into theology thus science chooses to be secular.

Why is it when you question evolution the white knights of science make the discussion religious and not admit at least that the theory may be lacking in that particular area in question?

Buefete, please do not comment if you did not do the necessary reading up. Everything you said here is wrong. Read "A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss. He shows proof of the big bang and how matter can be "created" while still obeying the laws of thermodynamics (i.e. the net energy is a system cannot change to put it very simply). It is way to long to explain here. He summarised it and it ended taking an entire book to explain.

As for previous theories of science being proven false... D'oh. That's what science is. As it is right now, science welcomes others to prove theories false. In fact, some people win Nobel prizes for proving theories false. As far as lacking in certain areas, science is well aware of where it's knowledge is lacking (yes including in the topic of evolution) and constantly tries to find out more to fill in those gaps in knowledge. Again, that is how science works. That is what science is. That is the mindset you have to get into before you start science in school.

TL:DR Please read before you comment.

[sMASH]

So Dinosaurs weren't killed out by the Creators as per Transformers??

They were killed by something... We don't know what yet.