[deftonesmx17]

I'm still bedazzled on how they know for a fact this is some transitional species and not just some new species that we never found before. You know, since we don't even know of every living creature By all means I would love to hear the explanation on how scientists know all this about a 365 million year old set of bones.  Evolutionist people are just as crazy as Intelligent Design folk...................you need to have some strong faith to believe in either of them.

[karajorma]

Ah. We've found one. Someone new enough to attempt to stick their head into this debate.

Who wants to go first?

[Mefustae]

That's the dilemma, should we let the veterans 'handle' him and potentially scare him off, or should the less-experienced folk take this one...

[Bobboau]

I'm yet to meet someone in person who believes in it

count yourself lucky
/*grumbles something about southern Illinois*/

[aldo_14]

I'm still bedazzled on how they know for a fact this is some transitional species and not just some new species that we never found before. You know, since we don't even know of every living creature By all means I would love to hear the explanation on how scientists know all this about a 365 million year old set of bones.  Evolutionist people are just as crazy as Intelligent Design folk...................you need to have some strong faith to believe in either of them.

What they do is they look at the skeletal features and identify how they correspond to both preceeding species and latter species, and fit that animal in the evolutionary chain.  For example, in this fossil they discovered transitional features such as the beginnings of wrist bones, shoulders, etc; similar to how you can see elements of wrist bones in dolphin or whale fins (which of course moved off of land having evolved from land based mammals).  It is a new species, of course, but it represents a transition between body types which we can date back to a point in time where, thanks to other fossil evidence, we know this type of transition occured.  And the importance of this specimen is that it shows a transition occuring between the characteristics of a purely water-living organism - i.e. fish - and one capable of supporting itself on land - i.e. amphibian - and that those transitional features can be seen as the precursors of features found in later land mammals.  Hence, transitional.

I'm not entirely sure you understand this, though, given that you don't seem to understand what a transitional fossil is.  That would concern me, that you're claiming it's based on faith when you don't seem to understand some of the basic concepts - tell me, if this is an organism with physical characteristics that can be mapped as 'between' two organisms which are dated to live before and after it, what do you think it is?  Where do you think a) it came from and b) the organisms sharing those characteristics in more  refined or specialised forms came from?

[deftonesmx17]

Wow.............I know what a transitional fossil is, but I don't believe we know the reality of 365 million years ago. Also, I'm not quite sure if this eluded you or what, but you can't have a debate with someone who doesnt support either side

[aldo_14]

Wow.............I know what a transitional fossil is, but I don't believe we know the reality of 365 million years ago. Also, I'm not quite sure if this eluded you or what, but you can't have a debate with someone who doesnt support either side

Can you actually provide any basis whatsoever to your belief as to what we can and cannot determine via paleontolgy (etc)?   Because at the moment you really should provide some form of evidence that you're not being wilfully or otherwise ignorant here in making that assumption (that this cannot be a transitional form).

[karajorma]

Wow.............I know what a transitional fossil is, but I don't believe we know the reality of 365 million years ago.

Why do you believe that against best scientific evidence that we can. What evidence do you have to refute this evidence or are you simply making this claim based on gut instinct and conjecture?

You claim that we can't know anything of the sort based on fossils so I have to ask you what about all those dinosaur bones? Are we supposed to believe that they are the bones of dragons instead? Are we supposed to say we can't prove that they were reptiles? Or that we can't know what they ate based on their body types?

Where exactly are you drawing the line of what paleontology can and can not tell us. Because so far you've simply made the assertion that we can't tell if this is a transitional form and not given any details as to what can and what can not be determined by science.

[deftonesmx17]

@karajorma
I'm not saying that we don't know anything of the sort based on fossils. All I am saying is it is nothing more than speculation/educated guesswork based on certain rules of science.  Its not like science is flawless either. Remember, man is fallible, meaning any and everything we think/say/do/create/experience is subject to flaws.

[aldo_14]

@karajorma
I'm not saying that we don't know anything of the sort based on fossils. All I am saying is it is nothing more than speculation/educated guesswork based on certain rules of science.  Its not like science is flawless either. Remember, man is fallible, meaning any and everything we think/say/do/create/experience is subject to flaws.

Educated.  Science has never been regarded as flawless - not here, not by scientists, not by anyone who knows what it is. But to take the view that being an imperfect race means learning is worthless, would leave us back at the stage of neanderthals.  If you really want to write of science as mere guesswork, then your computer is mere guesswork.  The transmission of this post is mere guesswork.  That the food you eat won't kill you is mere guesswork.  That the sun doesn't extinguish itself in the sea and the world isn't flat is mere guesswork.

[NGTM-1R]

Don't jump all over him quite so fast. He has a point. Several times we've made the determination (about creatures that are still alive) based on the physical evidence, then retrospectively gone back to examine the DNA and decided they're really not related at all.

On the other hand, that's arguably evolution at work too...parallel evolution.

[karajorma]

How does he have a point that this isn't a 375m year old fossil? How does he have a point claiming that science is faith based when it is exactly the opposite of that?

 No one says that science is flawless but to dump the findings and go back to mysticism and gut feeling based on the fact that it might be wrong is foolish. Science gives you the best possible answer that we know about.

Can you give me any good reason why we should dump that and go with a lesser explaination?

[aldo_14]

Don't jump all over him quite so fast. He has a point. Several times we've made the determination (about creatures that are still alive) based on the physical evidence, then retrospectively gone back to examine the DNA and decided they're really not related at all.

On the other hand, that's arguably evolution at work too...parallel evolution.

We're not talking about DNA connections, though, or direct lineage.  It's not like finding out, say, a donkey is not related to a cat in the expected way.  The fact that we can show this physical body design existed on any organism, and at this time in history is immensely important in proving the hypotheses; not the exact species transitions of saying x and y preceeded z, but in that z existed and had features that can be seen as direct predecessors to everything after.

[Janos]

Don't jump all over him quite so fast. He has a point. Several times we've made the determination (about creatures that are still alive) based on the physical evidence, then retrospectively gone back to examine the DNA and decided they're really not related at all.

On the other hand, that's arguably evolution at work too...parallel evolution.

Convergent evolution. And it's one of the reasons why paleontologists are now so very, very found of advanced/primitive features - such as certain bones and stuff - because they imply actual, not just purely morphological, relationship.
A good example of this would be New World Vultures - condors. Classically they were classified under order Falconiformes. At some point at 1980s people started to pay attention to certain weird features in NWVs' legs that were quite unlike those of Old World vultures, buzzards, accipiters, falcons etc. However, they were quite similar to storks'.

Sibley-Ahlquist phylogenetic tree, based on DNA-DNA hybridization (a relatively new technique, mind you!) essentially confirmed this. Your Turkey Vultures are more closely related to storks than they are to red-tailed hawks or american kestrels (I think you were American. It doesn't really matter though ). They all belong in really ****ed-up superfamily Ciconiiformes, which has stuff like grebes, pelicans, birds of prey (both NWVs and classical Falconiiformes), penguins and stuff.

What's the point? Of course we cannot know everything. The scientific method itself assumes that as we get more information, old theories become unsustainable. The breakthrough of 1950s - explaining DNA - is only slowly starting to pay off. Paleontology, cladistics, phylogenetics, zoology, population ecology and several other things are where they are because of genetics.

OK, so many scientific outbreaks of earlier, more innocent times are now obsolete. Ours could very well be in few centuries or even decades. However, as we cannot predict future we can only take what's observable, provable, falsifiable, empirically testable and use those to build rigorous, mathematic scientific method. Which is self-correcting, mind you. Not anything passes - you can spout inane bull**** and maybe even get it published, but it will get shot down and forgotten. If you actually have something resembling something viable it will come under extremely harsh probing and beating and kicking. If it still lasts, then someone will make a prediction and try to test it. And the bully crowd is still there, just dying to find a proverbial crack in the wall.

[ZmaN]

evolution doesnt work, its circular thinking, and theres nothing to prove it, i dont care what anyone says....

just lose it, there is an ultimate creator, his name is Jesus, and evolution is just a lie from Satan...

Oh, you might want to know this...  The closest animal realted to the human?
NO, its not a monkey or a primate, but THE CHICKEN, thats right, the closest Animal related to humans by matchin enzyme types is THE CHICKEN!!

[Turambar]

evolution doesnt work, its circular thinking, and theres nothing to prove it, i dont care what anyone says....

just lose it, there is an ultimate creator, his name is Jesus, and evolution is just a lie from Satan...

Oh, you might want to know this... The closest animal realted to the human?
NO, its not a monkey or a primate, but THE CHICKEN, thats right, the closest Animal related to humans by matchin enzyme types is THE CHICKEN!!

are you serious?
that makes you seem so much less intelligent than i gave you credit for before.  you refuse to think and reject the theory that is based on observation and thought in favor of the one that was handed to you by your parents or by some guy in a big building with a cross on top.

unless youre joking, i cant tell

[Skippy]

He's joking









At least I hope

[aldo_14]

Joking, I presume.

Hope.

The 'chicken-human' thing comes from Duane Gish, a noted ID propagandist (who makes basic errors like not knowing the 2nd law of thermodynamics in trying to dismiss evolution).  Anyways, it's basically a lie.  Apparently his arguement was that human lysozyme (a protein) is closer to chicken lysozyme than human lactalbumin, thus we are chickens.  No, really.  As a reference, of about 131 amino acids the Chicken lysozyme is different by 51 to human lysozyme.  Chimp lysozyme is identical.

In other words, if I have white hair and skin, and my cat has white hair, and my mum has black hair & white skin, I'm more closely related to the cat because it has the same colour of hair.  It's that sort of logic.  In fact, it's so mindnumbingly stupid, it's hard to find an idiotic enough allegory.

[Bobboau]

he's got to be.
if he was a real fundie he would not have called the 'ultimate creator' Jesus, he would have called it God.
God is the creator, Jesus is the savior.

[aldo_14]

Chicken thing is scary, though; him to have heard it means that someone actually publishes and disseminates that crap.