Scientist In Fight With NASA Over Intelligent Design

[Ivellious]

Oh, as for entropy: I understand that stars burn out, but stars also can be formed too. So my point was that, yes, our system might burn out, but that doesn't speak to the universe as a whole.

[bippy123]

No, Bippy, once again you totally fail to understand evolution. Evolution does arise out of need, that is precisely what you don't understand about the bacteria and fruit flies. A population can't just say "yeah, it would be nice to have adaptation x to avoid problem y" and expect it to happen. You are applying a presumption that isn't part of the theory of evolution. You are right, instability that leads to a wipeout of a population can presumably leave just a few more adapted individuals, but that isn't a requirement. Using the words "try" and "need" immediately tell me you know nothing about what evolution says, because my first day of biology class in college that was covered. If nothing else, it's silly to argue something that you aren't fully versed in, because your arguments

As far as the yeast at the U of Minnesota, I've gone over this on another post. Most of the criticisms of the experiment are based on the lack of follow-up experiments, which are in progress. The paper Rich is criticizing is preliminary work. he full paper/research is not complete. Still, your argument amounts to God of the gaps and isn't even valid for that reason alone.

Want transitional fossils? I really don't understand the need to site 32 year old information here...In science that would be laughable. Unless you are citing an original concept from that long ago, you need newer data than that. Do you have any idea how far biology, genetics, and paleontology have moved forward in over three decades?

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/l ... onal.shtml
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc ... diates_ex3
http://pandasthumb.org/links.html#kw-Fo ... leontology

Here just three websites I found really quickly for you. Please explain to me how all this is false, made-up, not real, or whatever you like. It's hilarious to just go on youtube and watch Michael Behe's response to being shown the dog-like-mammal-to-whale fossil intermediates and how he simply has nothing to say. He is similarly stumped at the more recent horse-to-elephant fossil relationships.

Also, because you are so quick to attack evolution as a scientific theory, and would rather see ID, I ask you a simple question. As far as the many intermediate fossils that do exist, the ones that appear and disappear over time, giving way immediately to a new form, how does ID explain that? Was the designer restless? Did it really stink at making new life? Was it just a bad case of OCD? If you can't answer that, as no one I've ever heard of can, then you can't explain ID past this generation.

lets take the first link ivellious. Pakicetus

http://www.trueauthority.com/cvse/whale.htm

Pakicetus was a dog-like creature that was discovered in 1983 by Philip Gingerich. It is often portrayed as a primitive whale, swimming in water and hunting schools of fish. This is despite the fact that only a fragment of the skull and a few teeth were discovered. Such a reconstruction of an animal known only from a piece of the skull and a few teeth should hardly be taken seriously.[5]

J.G.M. Thewissen discovered a more complete fossil of pakicetus, and the discovery looked nothing like the reconstructions of the pakicetus that swims in water and hunts schools of fish.[6] Instead, the evidence revealed that pakicetus was a creature similar to a dog and spent its time on land. The animal was not in any way a primitive whale.

Unfortunately, it’s still not uncommon to see pakicetus depicted in a swimming position, obviously trying to give the impression that it is a creature turning into a whale.

again there are many many morphological differences between these so called intermediaries and a whale , again I ask where are the intermediaries? NONE FOUND 50 million years back. You cant this creature an intermediary. By this basis you would call a whale and a bat intermediary because they posses the same type of echolocation.

lets take the next creature in line ambulocetus 49 million years back

Ambulocetus (49 million years ago)

Of all the supposed whale transitions, ambulocetus is probably the most well known. It is often depicted as an animal that is adapted to living on land and in the water. Of course, just like pakicetus, the artistic reconstructions of ambulocetus go beyond what the fossil findings justify.

The ambulocetus remains that have been discovered are much more complete than the first findings of pakicetus; however, crucial parts of the animal still have not been discovered. For example, the pelvic girdle has not been found.[7] Without this, there is really no way of telling how the creature moved. This, however, does not stop evolutionists from using artistic manipulations to make ambulocetus look like it is a transitional form.

Very often, popular science journals, such as National Geographic, have depicted ambulocetus as being very transitional-like by giving the creature webbed feet.[8] This is another place where the reader must be able to distinguish between fact and fiction. Soft tissue rarely ever gets preserved, and the ambulocetus remains are no exception. In other words, all we have are the bones. There is no evidence that the creature had webbed feet other than in the imagination of the evolutionists.

Basilasaurous is another animal in which they try to make the connection between it and pakicetus and ambulocetus. This was shown as fact by my evolutionary walking with mammals dvd.
and they do it by claiming that the small hind vestigial organs are legs that shrunk as they became useless in the water. Recently Biologists believe that these organs were used as stabalizers during mating.

The problem becomes even worse as they have now discovered remains of basilasouras 49 million years back. This throws the whole supposed evolutionary sequence for a loop and makes it even morre rediculous. the berkeley link is debunked here thoroughly. These are not even intermediaries. True intermediaries show the gradual steps in between the animals complete with most of the morphological changes. I have allrready debated this a million times before and ill do it again just to put out the correct info there. To say that there is a huge gap between these animals is an understatment and if you looked at them with an open mind you will see that these dont qualify as intermediates even in a persons wildest imaginations. When I debated this on the uncommon descent forum with a few evolutionists do you know how they responded? the6y shifted the burden of proof by asking me about the id explanation for the intermediaries. In other words they didnt have an answer.

http://etb-whales.blogspot.com/2012/03/ ... -from.html


Once you visit the site you will clearly see the illustrations that are on the page.

Now lets trash this fairy tale link you gave me completely.


Lets even take a few quotes from evolutionary biologists themselves to expose this fairy tale.


http://exposingliesinevolution.blogspot ... ti-ph.html


The lack of transitional forms in the fossil record was realized by evolutionary whale experts like the late E.J. Slijper: 'We do not possess a single fossil of the transitional forms between the aforementioned land animals [i.e., carnivores and ungulates] and the whales.'3


The lowest whale fossils in the fossil record show they were completely aquatic from the first time they appeared. However, Teaching about Evolution is intended as a polemic for evolution. So it reconstructs some recent fossil discoveries to support the whale evolution stories that Slijper believed on faith. On page 18 there is a nice picture of an alleged transitional series between land mammals and whales (drawn at roughly the same size without telling readers that some of the creatures were hugely different in size—see the section about Basilosaurus in this chapter). This appears to be derived from an article in Discover magazine.4 The Discover list (below) is identical to the Teaching about Evolution series except that the latter has Basilosaurus as the fourth creature and the Discover list has 'dates':


•Mesonychid (55 million years ago)
•Ambulocetus (50 million years ago)
•Rodhocetus (46 million years ago)
•Prozeuglodon (40 million years ago)
One thing to note is the lack of time for the vast number of changes to occur by mutation and selection. If a mutation results in a new gene, for this new gene to replace the old gene in a population, the individuals carrying the old gene must be eliminated, and this takes time. Population genetics calculations suggest that in 5 million years (one million years longer than the alleged time between Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus), animals with generation lines of about ten years (typical of whales) could substitute no more than about 1,700 mutations.5 This is not nearly enough to generate the new information that whales need for aquatic life, even assuming that all the hypothetical information-adding mutations required for this could somehow arise. (And as shown in chapter 9, real science shows that this cannot occur.)




""""The second in this 'transitional series' is the 7-foot (2 m) long Ambulocetus natans ('walking whale that swims'). Like the secular media and more 'popular' science journals, Teaching about Evolution often presents nice neat stories to readers, not the ins and outs of the research methodology, including its limitations. The nice pictures of Ambulocetus natans in these publications are based on artists' imaginations, and should be compared with the actual bones found! The difference is illustrated well in the article A Whale of a Tale?6 This article shows that the critical skeletal elements necessary to establish the transition from non-swimming land mammal to whale are (conveniently) missing (see diagram). Therefore, grand claims about the significance of the fossils cannot be critically evaluated. The evolutionary biologist Annalisa Berta commented on the Ambulocetus fossil:"""" again ivellios I ask where are the transitions???????, and please dont use the excuse of an incomplete fossil record as even evolutionary biologists know this is false, I know, you can always come up with punctuated equilibrium if you want, another assertion thats never been observed put forth by Steven J Gould who knew the fossil record has no true intermediaries and tried to hide it with PE.



Since the pelvic girdle is not preserved, there is no direct evidence in Ambulocetus for a connection between the hind limbs and the axial skeleton. This hinders interpretations of locomotion in this animal, since many of the muscles that support and move the hindlimb originate on the pelvis.7

Finally, it is dated more recently (by evolutionary dating methods) than undisputed whales, so is unlikely to be a walking ancestor of whales.



Basilosaurus isis (a.k.a. euglodon) is the fourth and last postulated transitional form on page 18 of Teaching about Evolution. Basilosaurus is Greek for 'king lizard,' but it was actually a serpent-like sea mammal about 70 feet (21 m) long, with a 5-foot (1.5 m) long skull. It was 10 times as long as Ambulocetus, although the Teaching about Evolution book draws them at the same size—it helps give the desired (false) impression that there is a genuine transitional series.

However, Basilosaurus was fully aquatic, so hardly transitional between land mammals and whales. Also, Barbara Stahl, a vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionist, points out:
The serpentine form of the body and the peculiar shape of the cheek teeth make it plain that these archaeocetes [like Basilosaurus] could not possibly have been the ancestor of modern whales.

Both modern branches of whales, the toothed whales (Odontoceti) and baleen whales (Mysticeti), appear abruptly in the fossil record. Stahl points out the following regarding the skull structure in both types:

Basilosaurus did have small hind limbs (certainly too small for walking), and Teaching Evolution says 'they were thought to be non-functional.' But they were probably used for grasping during copulation, according to even other evolutionists. For example, the evolutionary whale expert Philip Gingerich said, 'It seems to me that they could only have been some kind of sexual and reproductive clasper.'9

Again no intermediate form since its fully aquatic

A prominent whale expert, Thewissen, and colleagues unearthed some more bones of Pakicetus, and published their work in the journal Nature.13 The commentary on this paper in the same issue14 says, 'All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and … indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground.' (See illustration, above right.) This is very different from Gingerich's picture of an aquatic animal! But the evolutionary bias is still clear, describing Pakicetus as a 'terrestrial cetacean' and saying, 'The first whales were fully terrestrial, and were even efficient runners.' But the term 'whale' becomes meaningless if it can describe land mammals, and it provides no insight into how true marine whales supposedly evolved.

'Until now paleontologists thought whales had evolved from mesonychians, an extinct group of land-dwelling carnivores, while molecular scientists studying DNA were convinced they descended from artiodactyls [even-toed ungulates]
'"The paleontologists, and I am one of them, were wrong," Gingerich said.'

Such candor is commendable, and it shows the fallacy of trusting alleged 'proofs' of evolution. Pity that Gingerich is still committed to materialistic evolutionism.

G.A. Mchedlidze, a Russian expert on whales, has expressed serious doubts as to whether creatures like Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, and others—even if accepted as aquatic mammals—can properly be considered ancestors of modern whales. He sees them instead as a completely isolated group.16


Ivellious im quoting just evolutionary biologists. If you want to keep continuing down this fairy tale road please do and bring up specific intermediate fossils because none of these fossils are intermediate fossils.
Admitting your wrong can end this discussion

I AM STILL WAITING FOR THE INTERMEDIATE FOSSILS MY FRIEND and rediculing my ocd doesnt chantge the evidence one bit
Macroevolution is a fairy tale

[Ivellious]

OK. Did you know Michael Behe accepts this transitional fossil sequence? Just saying. And just for the record, why did your designer do all this failing and re-working? It's a question without much of an answer.

also, if you want to accuse me of picking and choosing parts of arguments, perhaps you could go back to my criticism of Seveneye's post a while back, to which he responded that he didn't have time to respond, and thus just decided to let my arguments go. Also, my post was very much more than one transitional fossil line...care to justify your totally misleading interpretation of evolution?

[bippy123]

Michael behe is just one man, remember that Michael behe also excepts common descent which many people don't realize about him. The point I was making is that Darwinian evolution shouldn't be accepted as a strong scientific theory, especially the transitional fossils which show incredible leaps of information that evolution can't account for.

I can admit that you made some good points in the other areas but on this your flat out incorrect . No offense was meant to you Ivellious , I'm just passionate against Darwinian evolution because I swallowed hook line and sinker all of their assertions which I just showed are not based on real science but on their worldview.

I did make some premature assertions in the other parts of your argument, which I admit that I should have been more versed on before I made a reply but on the fossil record it is the coup de grate against evolution.

What I don't understand is why aren't you as appalled as I am knowing that the flat out lied on the fossil evidence to the both of us, especially with the illustrations on ambulocetus which is a flat out lie.

Ivellious do you call this science? I sure as heck don't .
This is what I call Darwinian theology and it doesn't belong in our classrooms

[Ivellious]

Look, I understand that the fossil record is not complete. But it isn't the end-all of evidence for evolution, nor does it provide any evidence for ID. Genetics is an extremely powerful indicator of evolution by common descent. I don't see how removing one piece of evidence for evolution means the whole thing falls apart.

I'm curious, do you believe evolution should be taught in science classrooms at all? If not, what is your proposed new idea?

[seveneyes]

So you would scientifically appeal to the concept of "don't try because you can't figure it out."? If historically scientists used that reasoning to describe the complex things in life, it is unlikely we'd be alive today to talk about it. Well, maybe 1 in 5 of us would be around.

Also, I can find human rationale in creating a finite universe based upon Christianity. If revelations is true, this universe won't matter after that anyway, case closed. Though I'm curious, what evidence is there that our universe will end? Stars die out, but I haven't read that we have scientifically determined that the universe will just go away in the future.

Actually I merely stated the fact that we dont know and that applying our own human terms to that which we dont know is a little (maybe a lot)speculative. After all, we are speaking of God and not man.

The univers is dying out and there is science that shows it. It began when they found that the universe (because it was expanding) had a point of origin (possible physical endline) and without going into all the jibber jabber of the gum beaters could conclude that it too therefore would have and end. Another scientific law (thermodynamics) would state (in jibber jabber) that the universe will expend all sources of energy at some point and collapse on itself.

whatever has a beginning has an end.

[bippy123]

Again Ivellious the fossil record isn't incomplete, the problem is that the fossil record is complete, this is a huge dilemma for Darwinian evolution and it is just one of the most fatal evidences against evolution that we have and it's what makes Darwinian evolution a philosophy pushed on us by methodological naturalist high priests of Darwinism.

As I stated before , I'm all teaching microevolution (adaptation) in classrooms as long as it's stated as such but if they are going to teach the highly speculative far fetched inductive macroevolution then they should at least teach it alongside ID which is also inductive. In a battle of inductive evidences ID blows away Darwinian evolution hands down, plus it will allow the students to stack them up side by side to see which inductive evidence wins.

Ask yourself this Ivellious why do Darwinist say that ID is not science and yet push macroevolution on us as if it's a fact?
Again if macroevolution is a fact then the fossil record would be the first place we would see, yet we see the comple opposite there, and the fossil record is where we directly observe the evidence. It is the be all that ends all for Darwinian, but until a paradigm shift takes place the fairy tale of macro evolution will be taught yet they will prosecute and fire anyone that disagrees with the high priests of evolution.

Again the it's a fallacy to say the fossil record is incomplete, the fossil record is very complete and it destroys macroevolution, and if you don't have macro evolution you don't have Darwinian evolution.
The fossil record speaks of a Darwin of the gaps.

They continue to tell us that you don't teach theology in a science classroom so why are they teaching macroevolution in the classroom.

[Ivellious]

The fossil record is complete? Come now, Bibby, that's garbage. If the fossil record were complete we wouldn't find new fossils. We find new fossils every year, and knowing several paleontologists myself, I can stand to say that they would have no jobs if our fossil record were "complete." It's actually very interesting that you would claim it wasn't complete, because every single ID proponent I have ever heard of uses the incompleteness of the fossil record as evidence against evolution, not the other way around.

Macroevolution is not a fact, it is a deduction made based on a collection of information gathered mostly over the last 100 years in genetics and paleontology. What is the data for ID? The only thing ID proponents use to back their case is by punching holes in evolution. They would have people believe that lack of evidence for evolution is evidence for ID, which is a fallacy in and of itself. ID doesn't even have a clear concept of what it is...There is no consistency between the ideas of one ID proponent and another, and the idea itself isn't even defined by anything. There are no predictions, no models...ID is a philosophical idea spawned with one purpose; not for truth or reason, but to destroy evolution at any cost and to bring creationism back into public schools.

[seveneyes]

The fossil record is complete? Come now, Bibby, that's garbage. If the fossil record were complete we wouldn't find new fossils. We find new fossils every year, and knowing several paleontologists myself, I can stand to say that they would have no jobs if our fossil record were "complete." It's actually very interesting that you would claim it wasn't complete, because every single ID proponent I have ever heard of uses the incompleteness of the fossil record as evidence against evolution, not the other way around.

Macroevolution is not a fact, it is a deduction made based on a collection of information gathered mostly over the last 100 years in genetics and paleontology. What is the data for ID? The only thing ID proponents use to back their case is by punching holes in evolution. They would have people believe that lack of evidence for evolution is evidence for ID, which is a fallacy in and of itself. ID doesn't even have a clear concept of what it is...There is no consistency between the ideas of one ID proponent and another, and the idea itself isn't even defined by anything. There are no predictions, no models...ID is a philosophical idea spawned with one purpose; not for truth or reason, but to destroy evolution at any cost and to bring creationism back into public schools.

lol, good show ivellious. Nice post, but I do disagree. ID does have evidence, but no matter how convincing, atheists still seem to toss it away if there is even a remote possibility that a non-intelligence could have gotten the same result. That is not science. True believers are only fighting to keep God in our societies because we have witnessed God and know the importance of him and his word to all mankind. We are fighting for you and your children. We actually care as the planet slips farther and farther into chaos and godlessness. Science is incapable of filling the higher necessities of spiritual and emotional man, and people are using it to guide their belief systems when it is not meant to be used for such a thing. Science has become a religion to many. The worst is "science" that comes from an atheistic standpoint and argues toward atheism, because the effect of that leaves people believing that there is no purpose to life, no right or wrong, nothing after death and it devastates peoples psyches. It is completely nihilistic and evil. Furthermore it absolutely is false! Then you have the science guru who says "prove it's not false, you cant." I then give proofs and the "science" guy says that it isn't scientific evidence, and I have to refund his misery.

This battle has to continue.

Cutting to the chase with any atheist out there: Do you hope that there is a loving God out there? Something more to life than meaninglessness, suffering and death? Do you hope that there is something after you die? -I wonder if you have considered why it is that every single human being alive, or who has ever been alive, across every single cultural, racial and social or economic line ponders and desperately is driven by these questions and hopes? These questions and the resolutions we make regarding them drive every single aspect of our lives. There are no exceptions.

These things are what is known as a calling. It is calling out from within you, and they are a rite of passage for every human being out there. -If there is a question, there is an answer, and if the answers you have come to leave you hopeless and angry. If they are nihlistic and sad, you can be sure that you have come to the wrong conclusions. Every answer to lifes questions are GOOD answers. God has made it so.

I don't need proof for that which is self evident. Within our hearts God cries out, from within the wonders of the universe, God cries out. In the majesty of the sky, God cries out. "Come all ye who are heavy burdened and I will give rest to your souls."

[Ivellious]

I do believe in a higher power. I also believe that evolution did occur on this Earth. I am not at all opposed to the concept of God setting in motion a series of laws and principles to guide the process of evolution, just as I'm presuming at the dawn of time this "God" would have set up the laws of chemistry and physics and so on. I don't think the Theory of Evolution is innately atheistic. I know people from all faiths, including both Christianity and atheism, who accept evolution. Yes, many atheists like to turn evolution into a battleground for atheism, but they only do that because so many Christians are opposed to evolution based only on their religion and nothing else. I think both ends of that equation do the rest of the population a disservice, because it makes a bigger, more violent deal out of something than it really is.

You say you want to fight to keep God in our societies. That's nice. You can do that in your homes, in your private schools, your churches...Why is it necessary to bring God into a science classroom and tell every student in this country that your religion is correct, and to proverbially screw everything else? How do you justify forcing your religion on everyone else? I feel it is necessary to have a freedom of religion, and that extends to not promoting religion within schools.

[bippy123]

Ivellious you said the keyword. You "believe" evolution happened. Yes you are right, there are people of all faiths that believe that evolution happened. As I said before I'm catholic and I used to be a theistic evolutionist myself. In fact I was one for 42 years!!!! But the macroevolution branch of Darwinian evolution isn't true science, it's an assumption just as ID is. My change away from Darwinian evolution was first and foremost a scientific one.

Francis Collins of biologos is one such theistic evolutionist. If they moved both macroevolution and ID into the philosophy section of schools I would be very happy, but if the are going to teach us one philosophy in our biology class's then they should teach the alternative ones too.

That's all I'm saying

Ivellious I wasn't knocking your beliefs, this was before anything a discussion of the science of macroevolution, the philosophy is secondary

[seveneyes]

You know what I am curious about, is that nature seems to balance itself. If a population grows too large, weather, catastrophe like fires or other natural disasters, predation, disease or whatever, seems to come along and correct the imbalance just perfectly. I wonder if human beings ever get to the point where we are seriously challenging the balance of nature, if we too will begin to be re-balanced as it were. If so, it begs the question of whether the earth itself is a living organism with complex defense and healing mechanisms at work. To me this just screams new scientific theory all over the place. Even one that could validly replace evolution entirely. It also does seem to show intelligence at work within the framework of natural processes.

[Ivellious]

I don't know about that seveneyes. Natural disasters have been occurring throughout history regardless of the human population size. I'd say we are responsible for some degree of climate change and our actions have resulted in environmental problems that could hurt us in the future, but I have no idea how you could propose the concept of "Earth is consciously attacking humans" as a scientific discovery.

Also, how would your concept be evidence for ID and a detractor for evolution? It seems totally separate from the question of "how did the multitude of species on Earth come about?"

[seveneyes]

Well, it is not just about "attacking humans" that is just an analogy to show a possible defense mechanism at work, which in turn leads to demonstrating intelligence. It does appear that the earth works toward specific agendas and is creative in the maintenance of balance and health. This being said, evolution may be something else entirely. Part of a larger system. Lets say that species are like the parts of an immune system, anti bodies created for a function within the whole. -No longer could the theory be evolution.

I am not claiming any of this is or isn't true. Just musing over possible scientific theories. -Time to quit my day job? lol

[sandy_mcd]

I'm talking about the simple definition of entropy, as it applies to stars burning out, and an eventual loss of heat and disorder, etc.

If nothing else happens (there are apparently a number of possible scenarios), eventually the universe which reach a state of maximum entropy. This "heat death" state does not mean the universe ceases to exist, just that no more useful work can be done. Life could no longer exist.