Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry 365 Replies latest watchtower scandals

• 

  serotonin_wraith

  Do you agree with that statement? If so, is there any other explanation that fits these facts apart from common ancestry? If so, is there any reason, apart from assumptive bias, for choosing common ancestry as the cause of the genetic similarities?

  I agree with the statement. I find it difficult to think of a better explanation other than common descent when there are fossils showing the common descent in a step by step way. They all fall in line when dated too. We don't find a durodon fossil that can be dated before the pakitecus fossils. Funny that.

  What is so cute is the pictures they draw to illustrate the similarity.

  The pictures are based on the fossils. They may not get the skin colour right in dinosaur documentaries, but nobody says dinosaurs didn't exist.

  Here are nine fossils, not pictures, of the development of horses from a small dog sized animal-

  http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

  Are you saying all these animals leading to whales were really seperately designed? It's just a coincidence that the ones with long legs went extinct before the ones with legs half that size, who went extinct before the whales with only small parts of legs (funny design there, a useless leg bone), who went extinct before modern whales, who were really around at the same time as all these other animals, even though there's no proof in the fossil record of this?
• 

  BurnTheShips

  Galileo, strictly speaking,

  Endogenous Retroviral (ERV) Insertions

  Can this be considered evolution?

  It also fires off a thought, was Eve's apple full of retroviruses? ;-)

  Burn
• 

  Galileo

  Can this be considered evolution?

  It also fires off a thought, was Eve's apple full of retroviruses? ;-)

  The point was that the ERVs themselves allow a trace of ancestry, since if they are both inactive and in a germ line cell, they are forever in the same spot with the same mutations. Therefore if two people, or a person and a chimp, have the identical ERVs, they both got them from a common ancestor somewhere back in time.
• 

  BurnTheShips

  The point was that the ERVs themselves allow a trace of ancestry, since if they are both inactive and in a germ line cell, they are forever in the same spot with the same mutations. Therefore if two people, or a person and a chimp, have the identical ERVs, they both got them from a common ancestor somewhere back in time.

  Ah!

  Maybe retroviruses can introduce useful mutations also.

  Burn
• 

  Galileo

  Maybe retroviruses can introduce useful mutations also.

  Perhaps, I really don't know. The ones I'm talking about have mutated to uselessness, which is why they no longer change. They have no affect on evolution, but can be used to track who is related to who, by the sheer fact that they don't change. They ca be followed back through evolutionary change, like following the tire tracks of a car that's long gone. If I did a poor job of explaining the concept, I would reccommend reading the article I linked to. If you google Endogenous Retroviral (ERV) Insertions, you will get as much information and scientific papers as you will ever care to read. It's an amazing concept once you grasp it.
• 

  AuldSoul

  Here are nine fossils, not pictures, of the development of horses from a small dog sized animal-

  http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

  And yet, a horse. What non-horse animal descended, for certain, from the same animal?

  Wadoma tribe has a high percentage of an aberrant 7th chromosome causing an apparent "ostrich" foot, yet they are human. Will their spotty fossil remains be pegged as a different species by later intelligent lifeforms perusing the remains of our planet?

  Kung Bushmen (with an average height of just four feet, ten inches) in Africa inhabit the same continent with extremely tall Maasai. Surely these were different species, right?

  All human.

  It just doesn't wash.
• 

  AuldSoul

  Which ERV do the Hippo and the Whale share in common. I mean, I've read my Rudyard Kipling so I know where the Rhino got his skin and where the Whale got his throat and where the Elephant got his trunk, but I must admit I don't know where the Hippo got his ERV.

  Thanks!
• 

  serotonin_wraith

  Well, you must think this-

  

  or if you prefer the fossil, this-

  

  is still one of these-

  Incredible! The pakitecus was still a whale! Seriously, how much does a species have to change for you to accept this?

  How about if I showed you links between dinosaurs and birds? Don't tell me! I think I know your response. The birds are still dinosaurs!
• 

  AuldSoul

  Well, you must think this-
  
  or if you prefer the fossil, this-
  
  is still one of these-

  Why, exactly, must I think that? I don't recall saying that I thought that. I don't recall conceding that "pakitecus" (sic) is a whale at all, or even that it is an ancestor of a whale.

  When did I concede that, exactly? Do you have a fossil chain similar to the one you can produce for horses that definitely began and remained horses? Just curious whether you are trying to assert that because you can prove there used to be a different variety of horses that means I should accept without challenge that pakicetus became a whale.

  —AuldSoul
• 

  Barbie Doll

  Perry----- You have a PM