Evidence for Evolution

[Thing]

Evidence for Evolution: The platypus I’ve been told is a transitional species, or proof of transitional animals - but the platypus has platypus ancestors with the same attributes stretching back at least 110 million years to the Cretaceous Period. Another platypus relative is 165 million years old, the difference between modern and old, I’m told, is that one has teeth the other not. Small difference.

“The Cenozoic is the age of new life. During the Cenozoic, mammals diverged from a few small, simple, generalized forms into a diverse collection of terrestrial, marine, and flying animals. The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, or the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects. Birds also evolved substantially in the Cenozoic.”

The Cenozoic began 65 million years ago.

But the platypus relative lived 100 million years earlier still than the Cenozoic’s ‘few small, simple, generalized forms of mammal life’.

Sounds to me like platypuses/platypii are a transitional species which have existed always as transitional species from the beginning of mammal life in the Jurassic (dinosaury reptilliany ) Period…
Maybe they’re not transitional at all, - but just platypuses.

 

[mapleoak]

Maybe they’re not transitional at all, - but just platypuses.

The point I tried to make on another thread.

 

[rossum]

Case for christianity

When we study the Universe, we are driven to the conclusion,
not so much that the Cosmos had a Creator, …

Taken verbatim from here without giving the reference.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Sounds to me like platypuses/platypii are a transitional species which have existed always as transitional species from the beginning of mammal life in the Jurassic (dinosaury reptilliany ) Period…
Maybe they’re not transitional at all, - but just platypuses.

Platypuses are transitional because they are egg-laying mammals. They are on the transition between reptiles (who mostly lay eggs) and mammals (who mostly do not).

There is no requirement for transitional groups to go extinct. Many Americans claim descent from Europeans, that does not mean that all Europeans are extinct!

A transitional species has intermediate characteristics between two groups. A platypus meets that definition, as do the other monotremes whether extinct or not. Modern mammals are not descended from modern monotremes, but they are related. You are not descended from your cousins, but you are related.

rossum

 

[Thing]

Platypuses are transitional because they are egg-laying mammals. They are on the transition between reptiles (who mostly lay eggs) and mammals (who mostly do not).

There is no requirement for transitional groups to go extinct. Many Americans claim descent from Europeans, that does not mean that all Europeans are extinct!

A transitional species has intermediate characteristics between two groups. A platypus meets that definition, as do the other monotremes whether extinct or not. Modern mammals are not descended from modern monotremes, but they are related. You are not descended from your cousins, but you are related.

rossum

But platypus ancestors did not beget mammals, they stayed as platypuses. Is that right?
If so they are not really transitional between reptile and mammal.
Are there transitional creatures with both charactaristics of reptile and mammal which subsequently begat mammals in general?

 

[SeekingCatholic]

This is a minor point in the argument - whether evolution is a hypothesis or theory. It is not ‘fact’, and care must be taken to ensure that ones ‘conclusions’ about evolution do not contradict Church doctrine. One cannot ignore such writings as the Baltimore Catechism (issued by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, which most definately did represent the Church in its teachings) nor the doctrines that it is based on.

This is simply saying the argument to authority should trump the argument to evidence. Which it can’t, in the long run, because evidence will eventually need to be produced as to the qualifications and motivations of the authority.

 

[SeekingCatholic]

This is a major theological problem, in that God is not bound by the materialistic and evidential likelihood of doing anything.

Whereas nature has many more constraints. Thus, if the data can be accounted for by a natural process, the probability is much greater that a natural process is responsible rather than Divine intervention, since God could have acted in so many other ways.

 

[mapleoak]

This is simply saying the argument to authority should trump the argument to evidence. Which it can’t, in the long run, because evidence will eventually need to be produced as to the qualifications and motivations of the authority.

Well no, evidence is neutral. It is simply there. A cup of spilled coffee (fossils) is evidence. Argument to authority would be attempting to trump argument to evidence if authority said there wasn’t a cup of spilled coffee. One can come to many different conclusions about the spilled coffee. One can say it was knocked over, One can say it was always spillt, Another can say the cup was placed upside down and then coffee poured on the floor. One cannot say there isn’t a cup with spilled coffee though. Evolution and evidence are not one and the same. Concluding that evolution happened because there once lived a platypus is only a guess and nothing more. It is a conclusion. Authority can most certainly trump conclusion.

 

[The_Barbarian]

But platypus ancestors did not beget mammals, they stayed as platypuses. Is that right?

Platypuses are mammals. They are transitional, because they have a mix of reptilian and mammalian features.

If so they are not really transitional between reptile and mammal.

It would be truely remarkable if we could be assured of having the fossil of the specific individual that gave rise to more advanced mammals. Transitionals are merely individuals from transitional populations.

Are there transitional creatures with both charactaristics of reptile and mammal which subsequently begat mammals in general?

Thrinaxodon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Diarthrognathus is even closer.
sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/166/3907/881

The first true mammals were the triconodonts, like Eozostrondon, which were slightly modified cynodonts.

And no, few Catholics will be swayed by the postmodernist assertion that evidence is whatever you make of it. Evidence clearly can show you the truth.

 

[Thing]

Platypuses are mammals. They are transitional, because they have a mix of reptilian and mammalian features.

Maybe ‘transitional’ is a misleading term. How do I know that a mix of features is evidence of change. Afterall the platypus did not change into anything other than a platypus. Its just an animal with another set of attributes.

 

[loscampos]

Taken verbatim from here without giving the reference.

rossum

sorry for not referncing, i thought i pasted it at the bottom. Thanks for the correction

 

[SeekingCatholic]

Well no, evidence is neutral. It is simply there. A cup of spilled coffee (fossils) is evidence. Argument to authority would be attempting to trump argument to evidence if authority said there wasn’t a cup of spilled coffee. One can come to many different conclusions about the spilled coffee. One can say it was knocked over, One can say it was always spillt, Another can say the cup was placed upside down and then coffee poured on the floor. One cannot say there isn’t a cup with spilled coffee though. Evolution and evidence are not one and the same. Concluding that evolution happened because there once lived a platypus is only a guess and nothing more. It is a conclusion. Authority can most certainly trump conclusion.

I don’t know if you understood the point. You can’t make an argument to authority without also simultaneously making an argument to evidence about the reliability of the authority. We can look at the evidence surrounding the cup of spilled coffee and come to a probability of how it got there. We can investigate the splash patterns and so forth. Now if an authority wants us to accept his view of how the spilled coffee got there, in spite of evidence which would suggest otherwise, we are going to question his qualifications. Was he there? How does he know how the coffee got there? To answer these questions, we need evidence regarding his reliability.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Maybe ‘transitional’ is a misleading term. How do I know that a mix of features is evidence of change.

You wouldn’t, if they weren’t homologies. For example, if the platypus laid bird eggs, rather than reptilian eggs, it would just be peculiar, and a serious problem for biology. If the shoulder girdle of a platypus was homologous to that of a bird, instead of to a reptile, that would be a problem. If the “bill” of the platypus was like a bird’s beak, instead of like a therapsid bill, it would be a problem. Many of these characters are found in fossils of therapsids, and DNA analysis shows that mammals and reptiles are related by descent.

But we never see mammals with bird characteristics. Because birds and mammals had a last common ancestor before bird apomorphic characters evolved.

Afterall the platypus did not change into anything other than a platypus.

Actually, it did. The earliest platypuses, for example, were larger, and less specialized than the modern ones. They had teeth, for example (Dorunodon).

And there are more primitive monotremes than Dorunodon, with fewer specializations. As more fossils have started to be found, we are learning more about it. And the fossils are being found in Australia, Anarctica, and South America, all joined together at the time these formed. This is also convincing evidence that they do indicate descent.

 

[edwest2]

When I read about things like this, I conside the dog. The size differences are significant. There is a range of different skull shapes. They are all dogs.

And fish. Quite a few. Calling some specialized is an inference borne out of naturalism. They could just as easily have been designed to live in a particular niche. While some slight variation appears possible, this is built-in, i.e. pre-existing.

The common sugar beet has a range of sugar content that can be optimized under certain conditions. It’s all built-in.

I would substitute common design for common descent. All living things on earth are living under the same gravity, atmospheric pressure, temperature range and so on. It would make sense that they were made/built to suit their environmental parameters.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Thing]

Barbarian:

You wouldn’t, if they weren’t homologies.

Is it really like that though. Is the composition of a feature exclusive to one design. Do I have to make an assumption of a linear history. Are there no alternatives…at all.:crying:
Should’nt there be LOTS of transitionals [fossils] between reptile an mammal?

 

[rossum]

But platypus ancestors did not beget mammals, they stayed as platypuses. Is that right?

Firstly, platypuses are mammals so by definition platypus ancestors must have begotten mammals. Secondly, evolution deals with populations, not individuals. There was a population of very early mammals which split - some gave rise to modern monotremes (platypus, echidna), some gave rise to modern marsupials and others gave rise to modern placental mammals such as ourselves. Just as some Europeans gave rise to American descendants while other Europeans gave rise to European descendants.

If so they are not really transitional between reptile and mammal.

Transitional is not a matter of who your descendants are - we can never tell if a particular fossil had any descendants or not, much less whether they have any currently living descendants. Transitional is to do with the characteristics of a species, and whether or not its characteristics are intermediate between two other groups:

Reptiles          Monotremes       Other Mammals
--------          ----------       -------------
Scales/Feathers    Fur              Fur
Simple teeth       Complex teeth    Complex teeth
Three jawbones     One jawbone      One Jawbone
One earbone        Three earbones   Three earbones
No milk            Milk             Milk
No nipples         No nipples       Nipples
Eggs (mostly)      Eggs             Live birth

Monotremes are transitional because they have a mixture of characteristics of reptiles and mammals.

Are there transitional creatures with both charactaristics of reptile and mammal which subsequently begat mammals in general?

Yes, the Therapsids, otherwise known as the “Mammal-like reptiles”. Over time these became gradually more like mammals with two of the reptilian jawbones reducing in size and becoming part of the ear. They also changed from the reptilian jaw-joint to the mammalian jaw-joint with at least one group, Cynognathus, having both types of jaw-joint simultaneously. They also began developing mammalian teeth, with different types of tooth; rather than the relatively undifferentiated reptilian teeth, the teeth are differentiating into something more like our molars, canines and incisors.

http://www.palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Units/410Cynodontia/Images/Cynognathidae1.gif
Picture of Cynognathus skull from palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Units/410Cynodontia/410.300.html.

rossum

 

[The_Barbarian]

Is it really like that though.

Yes.

Is the composition of a feature exclusive to one design.

There is no design in nature. Designing is what limited creatures do, because they cannot truly create anything. The “design” belief would make sharks and dolphins close relatives because they are superficially similar, but biology notes that the similarity is not at all alike when you look at the details. Dolphin fins, for example, are modified legs.

Do I have to make an assumption of a linear history.

No.

Are there no alternatives…at all.

None with any evidence to support them.

Should’nt there be LOTS of transitionals [fossils] between reptile an mammal?

Yes, there are dozens of them. Would you like to see some more?

 

[Thing]

Thanks Barbarian and Rossum. I am going away now to think.
But I might have one more question about one specific mammal later. I’ll need to dig up some old info first.

 

[Sideline]

This is a minor point in the argument - whether evolution is a hypothesis or theory.

Well, it’s a minor point you decided to stress, and to pull out references to support. It is a minor point that is entirely misleading. It’s the difference between saying “an educated guess”, and saying “The conclusion reached by almost everyone who has studied the subject, after decades of testing and retesting.”

They are more than slightly different.

It is not ‘fact’, and care must be taken to ensure that ones ‘conclusions’ about evolution do not contradict Church doctrine.

It is virtually certain. There are no “facts” in science. There are observations and well tested theories.

If the only important thing to remember is that one should not draw heretical conclusions, why distort the validity of evolution?

One cannot ignore such writings as the Baltimore Catechism (issued by the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, which most definately did represent the Church in its teachings) nor the doctrines that it is based on.

I see.

Did the Balitmore Catechism state that evolution is, and only ever be, a hypothesis?

No?

Then what does that have to do with your initial argument?

 

[mulligan59]

Probability is the only type of argument that can be made for evolution. Science deals in probabilities, not certainties. Probability is likewise the only type of scientific argument which can be made against it. But the typical probabilistic argument can only apply against a completely stochastic process, because that is what is assumed. It does not apply against a front-loaded (a designer “rigs the game” from the beginning) or a directed (a designer “tweaks” the process as it goes along) type of evolutionary process. BTW there aren’t hundreds of billions of years available. The earth, according to the best scientific guess, has only existed for 4.5 billion years.

A. Well my exposure to pro-evolutionary arguments may be of the dated and unsophisticated variety, but they have not been of a statisical nature, rather they have been more like “gee, doesn’t this monkey look like us”, or because whales breath air, not ideal for the aquatic environment, they must have been land animals which “returned” to the sea. All based on assumptions which essentially link similar looking structures to the theory of natural selection. I have never seen a statisical case made in the positive. And the reason is obvious, it might support this tiny microcosim of evidence you have built with the virus, but it makes the big picture, full story seem ridiculous. But you apparently beleive God guided it. With God all things are possible, including my view.

Some viruses insert in specific types of locations preferentially. Those are called hotspots. This is well known. There are no known retroviruses which insert in the exact same location however.

A. I have to take your word for it lacking time or ready resources and perhaps even the cognitive ability to become expert in this myself. I can only say again, as with the example of the appendix, things we think we know today we don’t know tomorrow.

Seeking Catholic:
“God could do whatever He wanted” is not a scientific argument. You need to look at what the data is telling you about the likelihood of what He actually did do. Is it likely He created a genome with an embedded retrovirus for syncytin production, but one that mysteriously only uses the env gene, with the gag and pol genes and LTRs just along for the ride somehow; and also just as mysteriously, the retrovirus is in the same location in the genome in primates but in a different place in mice and sheep (in fact, a different retrovirus altogether).

A. First, God could do what ever he wanted IS a scientific argument. Aquinas said that Theology was the perfect science as it is based on Divine Revelation. He further said that natural scientific theories must be reconcilable to it or be discarded. The existence of an omnipotent God, not observed (by most of us), is just as scientific as the assumption that species may have descendants of a different species, not observed by any of us.
That said I do not feel competent to speculate on what God may do apart from what He has told us he has done and will do.

Seeking Catholic:
Ironically, the more freedom you give God to act the less likely it makes any particular action of His from a scientific point of view, if a natural explanation is available. I showed this with the example of planets and I’ll do it again with gravity. If I drop a ball and observe it hit the ground, the likelihood of it hitting the ground under standard physics is one. But the likelihood of it hitting the ground if an angel is moving it is much less than one, unless I show a particular reason why the angel would want to move the ball there. The gravity hypothesis has much more predictive and explanatory power than the angel hypothesis.

A. I disagree. It is still one (or very nearly). The Angel would perform his duty. If it is his duty to direct the ball to the ground he will do it predictably. It is the nature of Angels, except in the case of the occasional miracle.

Seeking Catholic:
The appendix is also a problem. Yes, it’s true scientists found a role for the appendix; it is a place where resident flora bacteria can grow and regenerate if some disease wipes them out in the large intestine. But what reason would there be to create Adam with an appendix, if Adam is not going to suffer disease in the first place?

A. But of course God knew that Adam would fall. Or do you think that God guided evolution, but in sort of a sloppy way? Did God create Adam (either through evolution or per Genesis from dirt) in the Garden, in perfect form before the fall or not? Don’t know what you’re trying to say here.

In conclusion, aside from the appendix, there have been a bunch of other phoney cases put forward for Evolution. I had a college level Zoology course in the mid-80s with a text book that showed those fetal drawings of humans, pigs, dogs, etc all showing what were claimed to be residual gills, evolution through our embryonic development. This whole notion has been thrown out. Pure invention yet it was taught as fact in universities 20 years ago. I no longer feel an obligation to understand it all, only to come to God, as Christ enjoined us, like little children.