Fossil Fish Sheds Light on Transition

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TheRaiders:
1.They can’t even agree on how it was achieved: from jumping up or gliding down out of trees.
  1. Back to the feathers again: Scales are not in any way similar to feathers. Like hair, feathers come from follicles. Scales do not.
  2. But evolutionists (currently) believe we mammals evolved seperately from reptiles.
  3. My point is not that this fossil doesn’t share some similarities with reptiles.
  4. It is that it was a fully formed bird, not a transitional one.
  5. I’ll close with asking if anyone heard about the bird fossil that was found to be 60 million years older than Archaeopteryx? That just doesn’t make sense!
    Patrick
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  1. A failure to have consensus at this time does not mean there will not be a consensus later.
  2. It should, of course, be noted that birds still retain scales on their feet, and a good line of fossils showing all stages of feathers and feather-like features exist.
  3. Evolutionary theory says mammals and reptiles shared a last common ancestor a very long time ago, and since then we have evolved independently.
  4. You fail to explain how these therepod features got there. Evolution does explain this.
  5. It did not have a keritin beak, Your definition seems to be 'it had feahers and could fly, so it must be a bird" This fossils shows a mosaic of features, theropod and avian. The definition of transitional is the presense of a mosaic of features.
  6. The tree of life is bushy. The Aerchi is not said to be directly ancestral to modern birds. It is said to have a mosaic of features that show close links between dinosaurs and birds. The presence of another bird-like branch of the tree of life is not unexpected.
In previous posts I have pointed out that many of the key features being focussed on had a wide distribution in related species and groups. This is both expected and explained by evolutionary theory.

Ignoring the distribution of features does not make them go away.
 
To those who believe we, or life in general, evolved from fish… I would like to point out that there still exists to this day a fish commonly referred to as a sucker.

Thal59
 
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TheRaiders:
It is as if God made those weird ones just to throw us prideful humans off when we thought we had his design plans figured out.Patrick
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That God, what a Character. Just like Pan, huh? 😃
 
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TheRaiders:
Just quickly on the teeth. A lot of fossill birds have been found with grasping teeth (the type the Archaeopteryx bird has). Icthyornis and HesperornisIs are two.
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Nice transitional features on early birds linking them with therapsid dinosaurs
Also, is it even a reptilian feature to have teeth? No. My lizard doesn’t have teeth. Lots of them don’t. Some mammals have teeth some don’t.
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How many dinosaurs didn’t have teeth? The claim is that birds evolved from dinosaurs, not lizards or mammals.
Also, speaking of bills. Ever heard of that mammal called the duckbill plat
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Are you suggesting the bill of the platypus is the same as a bird’s bill?
You are mistaken Tim, and I don’t blame you. The story that evolutionists put to finds like these makes it all seem very credible.
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Thanks for the sympathy, but, unfortunately for you, I’m not mistaken!
But did you know that the avian lung design is unique, and also present in Archaeopteryx?
Also, its brain was found to be 3 times the size of a dinosaur of that same size. It also had a wishbone. This highly specialized bone doesn’t pop into someone’s chest overnight, as feathers start growing and brain size triples, and their breathing system is revolutionized.
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Are these not things you would expect in a transitional form? As Digger points out, birds aren’t the only ones with wishbones. What other type of animal has been found to have those? Dinosaurs? What type of animals is Archaeopteryx thought to be transitional between? Dinosaurs and birds?
Evolutionists are often unimaginative people in the sense that they don’t even try to imagine all the things that go in to acheiving flight. Often times they just say “Anything can happen in billions of years”.
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Nice ad-hominem, but that isn’t actually how it works. I suspect, though, that you know that.
My point is not that this fossil doesn’t share some similarities with reptiles.
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So explain the dinosaur features that don’t exist in birds. Also, explain the absence of things found in birds like a beak, fused vertebra in the trunk and the other issues listed in the link I gave above. Ignoring them isn’t sufficient.
If you knew about evolution science, transitional species can’t show only fully formed traits of one or the other classification but TRANSITIONAL traits.
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How about fully formed traits of BOTH types, just as Archaeopteryx has. I disagree, though, with you assertion that Archaeopteryx shows only avian traits. You have to explain the saurischian features.

Peace

Tim
 
Dinosaur to Bird evolution from an expert:

“One of the wonderful coincidences of science is that immediately after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, his famous explication of the mechanism behind evolution, dramatic support for his hypothesis appeared in Bavaria. In 1860, a feather and, in 1861, the skeleton of a Mesozoic vertebrate obviously intermediate in form between modern birds and their reptilian ancestors were uncovered in lithographic slate quarries. This vertebrate was, of course, the urvogel (original bird) Archaeopteryx. As our knowledge of fossil birds has expanded in the subsequent fourteen decades, the question of how birds arose has become ever more fascinating. Most paleontologists now agree that birds – always popular with the public – happily happen to be the direct descendents of the best-liked group of extinct creatures, the dinosaurs. Of course, public opinion has no relevance to scientific debate, but the broad appeal of a dinosaur-bird link vexes the shrinking minority of researchers who dispute the link…That birds descended from predatory dinosaurs has become far and away the majority view expressed in many additional studies…From China has come the feathered dinosaurs Sinosauropteryx, Caudipteryx, Beipiaosaurus, Sinornithosaurus, and Microraptor as well as many hundreds of specimens of the bird Confuciusornis…the fossils are coming so fast that it was hard to keep up with the new data during preparation of this book…” – Gregory Paul, Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds (John Hopkins Univ Press, 2002), page 1, 11, 15.

It’s called research and scholarship. Something AnswersInGenesis, Kolbe Center, Dr. Dino, ICR, Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Bam-Bam, Pebbles, and the April 2006 issue of Catholic Crisis Magazine 😃 doesn’t know anything about. :rolleyes: :mad:

Thank you and good night. :yawn:

Phil P
 
Tim << Kinda early for bed, isn’t it Phil? >>

Maybe for you, I’m in China digging up (or manufacturing according to AiG) feathered dinosaurs. But I’ll be back shortly. Please don’t read this latest article (PDF) by George Sim Johnston of Crisis Magazine, you’ll get all hot and bothered like me. :crying:

Phil P
 
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PhilVaz:
Tim << Kinda early for bed, isn’t it Phil? >>

Maybe for you, I’m in China digging up (or manufacturing according to AiG) feathered dinosaurs. But I’ll be back shortly. Please don’t read this latest article (PDF) by George Sim Johnston of Crisis Magazine, you’ll get all hot and bothered like me. :crying:

Phil P
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You know, Phil, I know I should have listened to you. Did this guy have a certain amount of published space he is required to fill? I guess that would explain it. Maybe.

By the way, I wonder if the photo of a father and his son was the “bohemian-looking” father Johnston was refering to?:rolleyes:

Peace

Tim
 
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TheRaiders:
Don,
I have studied science and understand it. You don’t have a monopoly on that. Also, ever read Dr. Sarfati’s work? Didn’t think so. Those two ways to look at blue eyes are interesting, but the Christian viewpoit is a straw-man argument trying to make Christians with faith look stupid. Let me propose a third way to look at our blue eyes: God created the world, including eyes, and then stepped back from nature and let it run according to His laws. It is this view of God and His creation that made science possible because nature was not fickle, and it was made with patterns by a common creator. I recomend you read about science history, and you’ll find most major founders of modern science fields believed in a primitive form of the modern Inteligent Design movement. So, in conclusion, Christians believe they have blue eyes because their parents gave them blue eyes. They attribute anyone even having eyes to God giving them to us. Evolution-believing Christians don’t know it, but when they say God guided evolution they are believing the very thing that early Christian scientists rejected in Greek and Roman thought: That nature is constantly changed by fickle powers in the universe. It is much more coherant with science history (which follows closely Christian history) to say that God created a diverse biological world, with the ability for blue eyes, green eyes, and what I have: hazel.
I write computer programs, and it is anything but a random process. How much less so is creation, which is packed full of infinately more complex and inter-dependant pragrams we call genetic codes. They were created by God.
Patrick
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Hello, Patrick ~

I never claimed to have a “monopoly” on anything. Please try to avoid ad hominum argumentation. Yes, I have in fact thoroughly read Safarti’s little book, Refuting Evolution, my copy of which is now covered, page upon page, with annotations critiquing the author’s horrendous misuse of scientific terminology and concepts. (Just let me know which page you’d like to discuss.) If this is the type of sources from which you’ve gotten your information, then one would have to question your claim that you “have studied science and understand it.”

Your statement that “God created a diverse biological world, with the ability for blue eyes, green eyes…and hazel” I agree with completely. However, this is a theological conviction, not a scientific conclusion. Your statements confuse and conflate concepts from two different categories, and the attempt to blend them into a single subject simply makes for both poor theology and inadequate science.

You "recommend I read about science history." This makes me smile, since this is one of my main areas of interest. (Ever read Lindberg & Numbers, God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity & Science ? Didn’t think so.) If you’re allowing sources such as Sarfati (or Gish, Ham, Johnson, or Hanegraaff) to guide your perception of the history of science, one can see why you appear confused on the subject. You’ve been kind enough to recommend Sarfati; let me recommend, along with the text already mentioned:

Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea (U. of California, 1989)

Marcus Hellyer, Catholic Physics: Jesuit Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (U. of Notre Dame, 2005)

Herbert Hovenkamp, Science & Religion in America: 1800-1860 (U. of Pennsylvania, 1978)

Edward J. Larson, Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory (Modern Library, 2004)

Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Creationism (Knopf, 1992)

These are all major texts in the field, and I could list many more. Which of them have you carefully and thoroughly studied? My advise is to go to the primary (first-hand) sources on the topic of evolution, rather than to secondary anti-evolutionary sources. For Christians, I highly recommend reading Keith Miller’s excellent book, Perpectives on an Evolving Creation (Eerdmans, 2003), the contributors to which are all Christians.

God bless,
Don
 
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Flopfoot:
Why are discussions about science in the Apologetics forum? Shouldn’t this be in the water cooler?
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If any particular thread somehow bothers you, it seems a simple thing not to click on it.
 
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Orogeny:
What you want are absolutes. NO science works that way. Name me one single scientific theory that has been proven. One. I’ll wait.

Peace

Tim
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Tim,

We were not speaking merely of “theories”, we were speaking of science in general, and if you actually think that science has proven nothing your arrogance and conviction as to how much better educated than everyone else you are (so common among evolutionists) is very unjustified.
 
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2shelbys:
Tim,

We were not speaking merely of “theories”, we were speaking of science in general, and if you actually think that science has proven nothing your arrogance and conviction as to how much better educated than everyone else you are (so common among evolutionists) is very unjustified.
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So, since you are so much smarter than me, I’ll ask again and know that you won’t have any problem with humoring me. Please name one scientific theory that has been proven. Just one. For someone with your amazing intellect, that should be child’s play.

Peace

Tim
 
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2shelbys:
Tim,

We were not speaking merely of “theories”, we were speaking of science in general, and if you actually think that science has proven nothing your arrogance and conviction as to how much better educated than everyone else you are (so common among evolutionists) is very unjustified.
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Well, you’ve offered a knee-jerk emotional response in the form of a personal attack on Tim (and on other evolutionists, many who are committed Christians), but have neglected to answer his question. If, as it appears, you would contend that science has in fact proven something with certainty, it should be a simple thing to come up with an example or two. If not, you might simply admit that you don’t have an answer.

Truly,
Don
 
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Donald45:
Well, you’ve offered a knee-jerk emotional response in the form of a personal attack on Tim (and on other evolutionists, many who are committed Christians), but have neglected to answer his question. If, as it appears, you would contend that science has in fact proven something with certainty, it should be a simple thing to come up with an example or two. If not, you might simply admit that you don’t have an answer.

Truly,
Don
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This is just silly. Well, without going on for days…osmosis, homeostasis, and photosynthesis are among the “theories” which are proven scientific fact that no one disputes. Being a weight-lifter I know that science has also proven the processes by which the body retards or promotes muscle growth to the point that muscle growth can be artificially stimulated and muscle breakdown can be almost eliminated. We can even get as basic as saying that science has proven how the process of reproduction works. It has always amazed and amused me that evolutionists on one hand say that science has not, and indeed can not prove anything (a ridiculous notion) while on the other hand they insist that evolution is an undeniably proven fact that can not be argued. Funny stuff. And my response was not “knee-jerk” or “emotional”. Just re-read the posts in any evolution thread, including your own. The notion that those of us who question evolution just do not know enough, or need to read more, or are simply not educated enough are the common assertion. I have read much of what has been recommended (talkorigins being the most often recommended source) and they are all riddled with uncertainty and many such uncertainties have been proven wrong in the past, including many that supposedly supported the theory of evolution. That is why, as I said in my first post, I usually avoid these evolution threads. They are indeed pointless. Evolution is far from proven. Creationism can essentially never be proven. Supporters of both sides consider their positions as undeniable truth when neither is. I simply believe that God is responsible for putting all life here and do not make any guesses about how it was done, which is what evolution is. It is just a guess based on incomplete information.
 
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Donald45:
Well, you’ve offered a knee-jerk emotional response in the form of a personal attack on Tim (and on other evolutionists, many who are committed Christians), but have neglected to answer his question. If, as it appears, you would contend that science has in fact proven something with certainty, it should be a simple thing to come up with an example or two. If not, you might simply admit that you don’t have an answer.
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It wasn’t a personal attack on Tim or evolutionists. Sorry, but many evolutionists, Christian or not, tend to be arrogant and condescending. (If you want proof, I have it) That is not needed in intelligent conversations.
 
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2shelbys:
This is just silly. Well, without going on for days…osmosis, homeostasis, and photosynthesis are among the “theories” which are proven scientific fact that no one disputes. Being a weight-lifter I know that science has also proven the processes by which the body retards or promotes muscle growth to the point that muscle growth can be artificially stimulated and muscle breakdown can be almost eliminated. We can even get as basic as saying that science has proven how the process of reproduction works. It has always amazed and amused me that evolutionists on one hand say that science has not, and indeed can not prove anything (a ridiculous notion) while on the other hand they insist that evolution is an undeniably proven fact that can not be argued. Funny stuff. And my response was not “knee-jerk” or “emotional”. Just re-read the posts in any evolution thread, including your own. The notion that those of us who question evolution just do not know enough, or need to read more, or are simply not educated enough are the common assertion. I have read much of what has been recommended (talkorigins being the most often recommended source) and they are all riddled with uncertainty and many such uncertainties have been proven wrong in the past, including many that supposedly supported the theory of evolution. That is why, as I said in my first post, I usually avoid these evolution threads. They are indeed pointless. Evolution is far from proven. Creationism can essentially never be proven. Supporters of both sides consider their positions as undeniable truth when neither is. I simply believe that God is responsible for putting all life here and do not make any guesses about how it was done, which is what evolution is. It is just a guess based on incomplete information.
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Just a brief reply, and I’ll leave you to your beliefs. You offer physical processes such as photosynthesis as examples of things that science has proven with certainty. Yet, is it not at least possible that new evidence could potentially come to light which would modify, or even perhaps overthrow, the picture of photosynthesis as we currently understand it? You must admit that this is at least within the realm of possibility. It seems (as you write) “silly” to hold that there is no conceivable way in which our understanding of such a botanical phenomenon might be modified, changed, or even improved upon. If you’re in fact not saying this, then you must acknowledge that science has not “proved” photosynthesis (or anything else) in anything approaching an unalterable, dogmatic, or absolute manner.

If you read my previous posts, you’ll see as well that I in no way propose that evolution has been proven in this fashion. I also maintain that some scientific principles carry more confidence within science than do others, and that evolution ranks very near the top of the list. In this sense only (with respect to its evidential and empirical support) do I suggest that evolution has been scientifically demonstrated. It is as close to an absolute scientific “fact” as you are likely to find in science.

Finally, your claim that evolution is merely “a guess based on incomplete information” suggests that you have mastered the relevant primary scientific material on this topic. Yet, your comments posted above argue to the contrary. I hope you’ll continue to search through and study these issues. May God bless your efforts to that end.

Truly,
Don
 
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AquinaSavio:
It wasn’t a personal attack on Tim or evolutionists. Sorry, but many evolutionists, Christian or not, tend to be arrogant and condescending. (If you want proof, I have it) That is not needed in intelligent conversations.
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I don’t care about his attack on me. I’m used to it. I always figure that once that happens, it is a signal that the person writing the insults can’t respond intelligently. Everyone has their faults!😉

You claim that many “evolutionists” (which, by the way, I am a geologist, not an "evolutionist) are arrogant and condescending. Yet here is a good example of just the opposite. Additionally, it seems to never fail that within a thread on this topic I will have my faith questioned at least once. I have never, not even once, questioned someone’s faith, based on their disbelief in science. Yet, there are those on these forums that feel that if I accept the science behind evolution, I cannot be a true Catholic. And it aint the “evolutionists” that do that.

I always love the fall-back argument that someone is flaunting their education. When someone continues to make the same basic errors over and over and over, it is real hard not to come across as condescending.

Peace

Tim
 
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