The Official Perfection KOs Creationism Thread Part Four: The Genesis of Ire!

[El_Machinae]

Do we have a good example of a putative ancestor for the dog and the bear? A transitional fossil, or the like?

 

[Underseer]

I would like to know if discrediting the Flood is sufficient to discredit Creationism?

Or can the Flood be assumed to not have happened when a Creationist defends Creationism?

Absolutely not.

Discrediting the flood only discredits one particular interpretation of one particular version of the Bible. Although those who adhere to this interpretation are the most vocal proponents of creationism, the flood has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, so it is simply not relevant to the discussion.

 

[Perfection]

I'll agree that the flood is not neccesary for creationism. However, if a Creationist believes in a flood story I see no problem ruthlessly shreding it to bits.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Do we have a good example of a putative ancestor for the dog and the bear? A transitional fossil, or the like?

Unaccountably, there doesn't seem to be too much easily accessible material on the origin of the Caniformia (the clade uniting dogs with the bear-seal-weasel group) online. However, a reasonable model for the common ancestor of dogs and bears may be the extinct Amphicyonidae, or "bear-dogs"; below is a reconstruction of one amphicyonid:

 

[El_Machinae]

How many samples of this Amphicyonidae have been found? I poked around wiki to see that seals are closely related to bears. Huh. Things you learn.

 

[The Last Conformist]

How many samples of this Amphicyonidae have been found?

How many separate fossils? I don't know, but sufficient to errect 3 subfamilies, 17 genera, and 30+ species. You can find Amphicyon teeth to buy online (this is quite probably illegal, tho).

 

[carlosMM]

hm, how come the people who have to loudly preclaimed science is wrong can now not even answer a few simple questions about THEIR reasons for saying so?



classical_hero: will you please finally answer the whale questions?

 

[ironduck]

It makes sense that seals are related to dogs because they bark!

 

[The Last Conformist]

It makes sense that seals are related to dogs because they bark!

So does my brother, and he's not particularly closely related to dogs.

 

[El_Machinae]

That would be convergent evolution.

 

[ironduck]

Question for the young-earthers:

What did Noah and his crew look like? And how did the multiplicity of human variation occur?

 

[El_Machinae]

Ooh! Ooo!

Information loss! They looked like humans would if we weren't so inbred!

 

[classical_hero]

hm, how come the people who have to loudly preclaimed science is wrong can now not even answer a few simple questions about THEIR reasons for saying so?



classical_hero: will you please finally answer the whale questions?

Whale evolution?
Have a read of this.

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:

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.

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

A.This is the reconstruction of Ambulocetus, ‘at the end of the power stroke during swimming’, by Thewissen et al.
B. These are the actual bones that we have of this creature The stippled bones were all that were found. And the bones coloured red were found 5 m above the rest. With the ‘additions’ removed there really isn’t much left of Ambulocetus!

As you can see, that the evidence about what this creature was like is shakey for anyone to say exactly what it did with so much missing. We are missing the pevlic bone, most of it's spine and we are missing the shoulder bone, so we cannot know if the front leg has not more bones in it.

Also about Pakicetus.

You were asked, specifically, how many whale skeltons you had studied, how many fossil whales you had studied, what your training and experience in comparative vertebrate anatomy was in general, and which adaptations on the fossil whales (originally I was asking about Ambuloceutes, now let me broaden that to the second whale you also posted, too) make you convinced they were no less effective at terrestrial locomotion than their next kin, whom scientist regard as pure landlubbers.

So are you trying to convince me that the Pakietus are some sort "whale" predicessor? If so, then the next bit is relevant, if not then the alst bit is not needed. The last bit of that is very confusing.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v413/n6853/full/413277a0.html

Taken together, the features of the skull indicate that pakicetids were terrestrial, and the locomotor skeleton displays running adaptations. Some features of the sense organs of pakicetids are also found in aquatic mammals, but they do not necessarily imply life in water. Pakicetids were terrestrial mammals, no more amphibious than a tapir.

So from you expert opinion you basically disagree with the person who first discovered the fossil and had way more time to look at them than anyone would. Plus this quote would go against any supposed whale features, because these creatures are mainly land based, which whales are not and they share very little in common to even make them an ancestor of the whale, which is why it is a whale of a tale.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v8/i1/whale.asp

Both morphological and molecular data are vulnerable to the problem of homoplasies—reversals to ancestral conditions or parallel changes in different lineages that can camouflage the true phylogeny …. For example, the ear region of the skull, traditionally considered to be a good source of highly stable characters, shows some glaring homoplasies among the ungulates and cetaceans.

In other words, the supposed whale transition is not at all clear—unlike the propaganda pronouncements intended for public consumption.

 

[Dr Tiny]

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.

WRONG
The pelvis might not be saved in that particular specimen, but one would have to be foolish indeed to think that was the only Ambulocetus ever discovered.

And for those who want a bit more detail
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie030.html

Edit
After reading Thewissen's Nature paper and looking at Thewissen lab homepage I see that this quote

Taken together, the features of the skull indicate that pakicetids were terrestrial, and the locomotor skeleton displays running adaptations. Some features of the sense organs of pakicetids are also found in aquatic mammals, but they do not necessarily imply life in water. Pakicetids were terrestrial mammals, no more amphibious than a tapir.

is taken out of context. Whilst he does say that Pakicetids were land based animals this is unsurprising given that mammals evolved on land ie the first whale ancestors would be land based (pakicetus), becoming amphibious (ambulocetus) and then finally living fully in the sea (modern whales). There is nothing in the nature paper that contradicts this hypothesis.

 

[GenMarshall]

I'll agree that the flood is not neccesary for creationism. However, if a Creationist believes in a flood story I see no problem ruthlessly shreding it to bits.

I hope you do have enough, since there are other flood stories from other Religions and Cultures. MesoAmerica had their flood story, China had their flood story. The thing I cant get around is that I know Noah's Flood is plausable because it would have taken place in a overexadurated hydrological or meteorlogical (possibly combination of both) with one with a lake that is below the sealevel that floods when a natural dam blocking a large body of water breaks or an overexadurated account of a sea stranded sea captan and his crew that were swept away in a rainstorm.

Noah's Flood I can safely state that its just an overexadurated flood story. Unless more evidence of the Global Deluge actualy happened is found within Geology.

I do humbly apologise for bringing this up.

 

[Perfection]

@Classical, I've a rebuttal in the works have patience, it's coming.

CivG, first off, don't apologize, this is the kind of stuff the thread is for.

The idea of a global flood is massively silly, I think we both can agree on that. I'd say culutral flood myths are common because floods are common, especially in uncontrolled river basins which is where basicly every ancient civilization started.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

CivGeneral, I think you're reffering to Ryan and Pitman. They had a theory that during the ice-age sealevels would drop, and the Black Sea would have become a big fresh water lake. The surrounding land being very fertile this would have been a paradise on earth and many tribes settled down here.

Then after the ice-age, the Atlantic and with it the Mediterranean sealevels would have rissen. At some point the Bosporus broke and the area around the Black Lake (now sea) flooded. For the people living there it must have seemed like the world was flooding.

Here's the book and a short summary.

 

[jafink]

I personally believe in Creationism, and also in a Global Flood, but I am just a child, so I will be unable to back up my beliefs as well as ALL of you evolutionists will back up yours. (It seems like there are at least ten times the number of evolutionists in this thread than creationists.)

Anyways, if I live my life believing that there is something better after death, and that there is an omnipotent God who loves and cares about me, even if it isn't true, I think I will have had a much more peaceful and happy existence than if I didn't. And because of that I would like to ask you this; if the Earth was not created, then there certainly won't be an Afterlife, so why are you wasting your valuable time trying to prove the beliefs of others are incorrect? Especially when those beliefs give them hope (in what is sometimes a pretty troubled world). I am sure I will instantly be pounced upon by people with "Scientific Proof" that my beliefs are wrong, but I had to stand up for what I belive in.

 

[Perfection]

A.This is the reconstruction of Ambulocetus, ‘at the end of the power stroke during swimming’, by Thewissen et al.
B. These are the actual bones that we have of this creature The stippled bones were all that were found. And the bones coloured red were found 5 m above the rest. With the ‘additions’ removed there really isn’t much left of Ambulocetus!

As you can see, that the evidence about what this creature was like is shakey for anyone to say exactly what it did with so much missing. We are missing the pevlic bone, most of it's spine and we are missing the shoulder bone, so we cannot know if the front leg has not more bones in it.

That's false
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&issn=0272-4634&volume=022&issue=02&page=0405

Also about Pakicetus.

So are you trying to convince me that the Pakietus are some sort "whale" predicessor? If so, then the next bit is relevant, if not then the alst bit is not needed. The last bit of that is very confusing.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v413/n6853/full/413277a0.html

No, Carlos is talking about Ambulocetes, which isn't a pakicetid.

@jafink, this thread is debating within the realm of science, if you can't do it there's nothing we can talk about here. If you want to ignore scientific knowledge because you feel it threatens your worldview, there's not much I can do about it. I think viewpoints should be based on evidence, not blind devotion to dogma but I can't force you to be agree.

 

[warpus]

an omnipotent God who loves and cares about me, even if it isn't true, I think I will have had a much more peaceful and happy existence than if I didn't. And because of that I would like to ask you this; if the Earth was not created, then there certainly won't be an Afterlife, so why are you wasting your valuable time trying to prove the beliefs of others are incorrect?

Because we're after the truth.