How To Define "Evolution"?

[PoliticalChic]

Charles Darwin published his 'Origin' in 1859. He lived until 1882. He would have been amazed at the fossil record we have today. From the evolution of the mammals that we find the transistionals in the Karoo, to the horses of the John Day volcanics. We have literally thousands of transitional fossils, for many hundreds of species.

Today, the Theory of Evolution is simply the most robust of the Scientfic Theories. We have the evidence in the fossil record. We are beginning to understand how the basis of evolution, the DNA in your every cell, works. We are actually engineering evolution, transplanting genetic material from one species to another. And the offspring retain the modified characteristics.

The evidence for evolution is simply overwhelming. Only the most ignorant of people continue to rant about it. Those and the religious fanatics that simply cannot face reality.

"He would have been amazed at the fossil record we have today."
Actually, that's not true.

When I have the time I'll explain the situation, and why the theory remains, as you put it, robust.
I like that word in this connection.


BTW....did you know that 'robust' means strong,...but it doesn't mean factual.

Actually that is true. The fossil record has expanded phenomenally since Darwin’s time.

Religious zealots continue to attack “Darwinism” because the fossil record is a direct contradiction to a literal Genesis account. In spite of the relatively rare circumstances under which fossilization occurs, we better understand the physical processes that lead to fossilization much better than it was understood in the 19th century. What fundie zealots fail to understand, much less address, is that evolutionary biology does not explicitly require a perfect or even perfectly complete fossil record. In fact, No one should expect to see such a perfect record.

It is a misconception promoted relentlessly among the creation ministries that evolutionary theory is based primarily on the fossil record. The fossil record is just one component of evidence supporting evolution. Evidence also includes genetic data and the hierarchy of shared characteristics.

The TalkOrigins website has a good article here:

The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence

The article reiterates one of the stereotypical creationist challenges to the fossil record. In this case, there’s a comment from Duh’wayne Gish.

One of the favorite anti-evolutionist challenges to the existence of transitional fossils is the supposed lack of transitional forms in the evolution of the whales. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) regularly trots out the "bossie-to-blowhole" transition to ridicule the idea that whales could have evolved from terrestrial, hooved ancestors.
There simply are no transitional forms in the fossil record between the marine mammals and their supposed land mammal ancestors . . . It is quite entertaining, starting with cows, pigs, or buffaloes, to attempt to visualize what the intermediates may have looked life. Starting with a cow, one could even imagine one line of descent which prematurely became extinct, due to what might be called an “udder failure” (Gish 1985: 78-9).

BTW, It is fascinating to notice that creationists make much of the way our understanding of our own ancestry has been adjusted over time to accommodate new fossil evidence. And yet they never seem to notice that if creationism were true, there shouldn't be any of that fossil evidence to require accommodation.

Once again the extremist is going to be obligated to do a lot of speculative special pleadings to account for the anomalies...

"Actually that is true. The fossil record has expanded phenomenally since Darwin’s time.

Religious zealots....blah blah blah..."

Simple enough for you to prove that: put up.



As you are a certified Darwin zealot, you will not doubt lie or obfuscate when confronted with this query:

Why have you been unable to provide fossil evidence documenting change from one species to a different species?




" The intense modern interest in this "Cambrian explosion" was sparked by the work of Harry B. Whittington and colleagues, who, in the 1970s, re-analysed many fossils from the Burgess Shale (see below) and concluded that several were complex, but different from any living animals.[14][15]

The most common organism, Marrella, was clearly an arthropod, but not a member of any known arthropod class. Organisms such as the five-eyed Opabinia and spiny slug-like Wiwaxia were so different from anything else known that Whittington's team assumed they must represent different phyla, only distantly related to anything known today. Stephen Jay Gould’s popular 1989 account of this work, Wonderful Life,[16]brought the matter into the public eye and raised questions about what the explosion represented. While differing significantly in details, both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly." Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Again?

"....both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly."

('cause there's no fossils that prove Darwin's theory...true? True.)


Gee....that's gotta hurt a Darwin fanatic, huh?



Can't wait to see your response....it won't include fossil evidence, will it.....

 

[orogenicman]

"He would have been amazed at the fossil record we have today."
Actually, that's not true.

When I have the time I'll explain the situation, and why the theory remains, as you put it, robust.
I like that word in this connection.


BTW....did you know that 'robust' means strong,...but it doesn't mean factual.

Actually that is true. The fossil record has expanded phenomenally since Darwin’s time.

Religious zealots continue to attack “Darwinism” because the fossil record is a direct contradiction to a literal Genesis account. In spite of the relatively rare circumstances under which fossilization occurs, we better understand the physical processes that lead to fossilization much better than it was understood in the 19th century. What fundie zealots fail to understand, much less address, is that evolutionary biology does not explicitly require a perfect or even perfectly complete fossil record. In fact, No one should expect to see such a perfect record.

It is a misconception promoted relentlessly among the creation ministries that evolutionary theory is based primarily on the fossil record. The fossil record is just one component of evidence supporting evolution. Evidence also includes genetic data and the hierarchy of shared characteristics.

The TalkOrigins website has a good article here:

The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence

The article reiterates one of the stereotypical creationist challenges to the fossil record. In this case, there’s a comment from Duh’wayne Gish.

One of the favorite anti-evolutionist challenges to the existence of transitional fossils is the supposed lack of transitional forms in the evolution of the whales. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) regularly trots out the "bossie-to-blowhole" transition to ridicule the idea that whales could have evolved from terrestrial, hooved ancestors.
There simply are no transitional forms in the fossil record between the marine mammals and their supposed land mammal ancestors . . . It is quite entertaining, starting with cows, pigs, or buffaloes, to attempt to visualize what the intermediates may have looked life. Starting with a cow, one could even imagine one line of descent which prematurely became extinct, due to what might be called an “udder failure” (Gish 1985: 78-9).

BTW, It is fascinating to notice that creationists make much of the way our understanding of our own ancestry has been adjusted over time to accommodate new fossil evidence. And yet they never seem to notice that if creationism were true, there shouldn't be any of that fossil evidence to require accommodation.

Once again the extremist is going to be obligated to do a lot of speculative special pleadings to account for the anomalies...

"Actually that is true. The fossil record has expanded phenomenally since Darwin’s time.

Religious zealots....blah blah blah..."

Simple enough for you to prove that: put up.



As you are a certified Darwin zealot, you will not doubt lie or obfuscate when confronted with this query:

Why have you been unable to provide fossil evidence documenting change from one species to a different species?




" The intense modern interest in this "Cambrian explosion" was sparked by the work of Harry B. Whittington and colleagues, who, in the 1970s, re-analysed many fossils from the Burgess Shale (see below) and concluded that several were complex, but different from any living animals.[14][15]

The most common organism, Marrella, was clearly an arthropod, but not a member of any known arthropod class. Organisms such as the five-eyed Opabinia and spiny slug-like Wiwaxia were so different from anything else known that Whittington's team assumed they must represent different phyla, only distantly related to anything known today. Stephen Jay Gould’s popular 1989 account of this work, Wonderful Life,[16]brought the matter into the public eye and raised questions about what the explosion represented. While differing significantly in details, both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly." Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Again?

"....both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly."

('cause there's no fossils that prove Darwin's theory...true? True.)


Gee....that's gotta hurt a Darwin fanatic, huh?



Can't wait to see your response....it won't include fossil evidence, will it.....

Still waiting for you to produce that Cambrian bunny rabbit, dear.

 

[Hollie]

"He would have been amazed at the fossil record we have today."
Actually, that's not true.

When I have the time I'll explain the situation, and why the theory remains, as you put it, robust.
I like that word in this connection.


BTW....did you know that 'robust' means strong,...but it doesn't mean factual.

Actually that is true. The fossil record has expanded phenomenally since Darwin’s time.

Religious zealots continue to attack “Darwinism” because the fossil record is a direct contradiction to a literal Genesis account. In spite of the relatively rare circumstances under which fossilization occurs, we better understand the physical processes that lead to fossilization much better than it was understood in the 19th century. What fundie zealots fail to understand, much less address, is that evolutionary biology does not explicitly require a perfect or even perfectly complete fossil record. In fact, No one should expect to see such a perfect record.

It is a misconception promoted relentlessly among the creation ministries that evolutionary theory is based primarily on the fossil record. The fossil record is just one component of evidence supporting evolution. Evidence also includes genetic data and the hierarchy of shared characteristics.

The TalkOrigins website has a good article here:

The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence

The article reiterates one of the stereotypical creationist challenges to the fossil record. In this case, there’s a comment from Duh’wayne Gish.

One of the favorite anti-evolutionist challenges to the existence of transitional fossils is the supposed lack of transitional forms in the evolution of the whales. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) regularly trots out the "bossie-to-blowhole" transition to ridicule the idea that whales could have evolved from terrestrial, hooved ancestors.
There simply are no transitional forms in the fossil record between the marine mammals and their supposed land mammal ancestors . . . It is quite entertaining, starting with cows, pigs, or buffaloes, to attempt to visualize what the intermediates may have looked life. Starting with a cow, one could even imagine one line of descent which prematurely became extinct, due to what might be called an “udder failure” (Gish 1985: 78-9).

BTW, It is fascinating to notice that creationists make much of the way our understanding of our own ancestry has been adjusted over time to accommodate new fossil evidence. And yet they never seem to notice that if creationism were true, there shouldn't be any of that fossil evidence to require accommodation.

Once again the extremist is going to be obligated to do a lot of speculative special pleadings to account for the anomalies...

"Actually that is true. The fossil record has expanded phenomenally since Darwin’s time.

Religious zealots....blah blah blah..."

Simple enough for you to prove that: put up.



As you are a certified Darwin zealot, you will not doubt lie or obfuscate when confronted with this query:

Why have you been unable to provide fossil evidence documenting change from one species to a different species?




" The intense modern interest in this "Cambrian explosion" was sparked by the work of Harry B. Whittington and colleagues, who, in the 1970s, re-analysed many fossils from the Burgess Shale (see below) and concluded that several were complex, but different from any living animals.[14][15]

The most common organism, Marrella, was clearly an arthropod, but not a member of any known arthropod class. Organisms such as the five-eyed Opabinia and spiny slug-like Wiwaxia were so different from anything else known that Whittington's team assumed they must represent different phyla, only distantly related to anything known today. Stephen Jay Gould’s popular 1989 account of this work, Wonderful Life,[16]brought the matter into the public eye and raised questions about what the explosion represented. While differing significantly in details, both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly." Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Again?

"....both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly."

('cause there's no fossils that prove Darwin's theory...true? True.)


Gee....that's gotta hurt a Darwin fanatic, huh?



Can't wait to see your response....it won't include fossil evidence, will it.....

Oh, my. How terrible it must be for you when Harun Yahya doesn’t have a handy parsed, edited or fraudulent “quote” you can cut and paste.



That is why you are left to the polluted backwater of creationist ineptitude and are reduced to
nothing more that ....blah blah blah..."



You may stagger and reel and seek to evade, but others reading this thread will certainly recognize that you have refused to address the careless cutting and pasting that defines your pointless Harun Yahya’isms. You have not even attempted to refute the facts of evolutionary science. Like the craven Harun Yahya groupie sputtering on with fraudulent “quotes”, you have merely proven that you are unable to compete. Alas, I expected no better of you.

Those who deny evolution, that certain "grandeur in this view of life" as Darwin characterized it, should be granted a special exemption from the process predicated upon their self-evident inability to adapt and thrive. If you are incapable of recognizing the overwhelming evidence for evolution, it obviously missed you, so you're excused.

You are obviously unable to reconcile the facts of evolution with the religious tales and fables promoted by Harun Yahya.

Simply ignoring the evidence for transitional fossils, and worse, suggesting that the entirety of the scientific data supporting evolutionary biology is a part of some grand, worldwide conspiracy theory is laughable.



PC and the Harun Yahya groupies she is in thrall to are illustrative of religious zealots who don't “believe” for intellectual reasons or reasons which are particularly intuitive. It's unfortunately true that many religious people are not concerned with the issue of truth and falsehood. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple matter of hand waving it off by saying “that that's their problem, not mine” because the consequences of such mindlessly connecting nonexistent dots has consequences. When such persistent and blatant irrationalism becomes a mindset, extremists can and do convince themselves of almost anything. Let’s remember that the standards of knowledge are our only means of selective discrimination that defines rationality and irrationality from meaningless claims.




As opposed to scouring Harun Yahya for selective “quotes”, the religious zealot is forced to “quote-mine” wiki. Better still, the zealot is forced to quote, “quotes” of 1970’s vintage.

And, not surprisingly, we see the lies and edits to “quotes” that are such a part of the fundamentalist zealot program of mis-information.


Whenever I see parsed “quotes” cut and pasted by religious zealots, I typically find the “quotes” are heavily edited so as to distort the authors’ meaning and context.



In this case:
"....both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phylahad appeared rather suddenly."

Gee whiz, it seems the religious extremist is a bit befuddled about terms such as “rather suddenly” with respect to geologic timescales.



With a bit of searching, what we find is that the religious zealot has further edited the “quote”.

"While differing significantly in details, both Whittington and Gould proposed that all modern animal phyla had appeared rather suddenly. This view was influenced by the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which Eldredge and Gould developed in the early 1970s and which views evolution as long intervals of near-stasis "punctuated" by short periods of rapid change"

Yep. Just more of the lies that defines the agenda of the religious extremists.

It’s been a short learning process but I’ve come to expect that if a religious extremists fingers are typing, it’s a lie.



CONCLUSIONS

The Cambrian Fossil Record and the Origin of the Phyla


The combination of important refinements in the treatment of the systematics of Cambrian fossils, and in our understanding of Cambrian stratigraphy is leading to a more precise view of the Cambrian explosion. Phyla do not appear in a sudden jumble, implying an appearance in the fossil record induced by some external influence (e.g., a rise in atmospheric oxygen levels) that allowed a standing diversity already present to be manifested in the record. Rather, the impression rather is of a rapid, but nevertheless resolvable and orderly appearance, starting with the earliest skeletal forms such as Cloudina that are reasonably assignable to a diploblast grade (i.e., stem- or crown-group cnidarians or basal stem-group bilaterians).

 

[Hollie]

Cambrian faunas

Cambrian faunas - The Panda's Thumb

File this under “It’s all a conspiracy perpetrated by those atheistic evolutionists”

 

[PoliticalChic]

Cambrian faunas

Cambrian faunas - The Panda's Thumb

File this under “It’s all a conspiracy perpetrated by those atheistic evolutionists”

Wait.....


This is your latest retreat???

" In fact this is the origin for all fossil and sedimentary rock etc. There is no cambrian age."

 

[Hollie]

Cambrian faunas

Cambrian faunas - The Panda's Thumb

File this under “It’s all a conspiracy perpetrated by those atheistic evolutionists”

Wait.....


This is your latest retreat???

" In fact this is the origin for all fossil and sedimentary rock etc. There is no cambrian age."

No, wait........

('cause there's no fossils that prove Darwin's theory...true? True.)

There is no Cambrian Age because there are no fossils.... ).... other than those planted by those "evilutionists".


You never did identify for us how those evilutionists managed to plant so many fossils (the fossils that don't exist), without being seen at night, under the cover of darkness, digging holes to plant the fossil evidence....(the fossils that don't exist).



So, you typically slithered away when confronted with:

BTW, It is fascinating to notice that creationists make much of the way our understanding of our own ancestry has been adjusted over time to accommodate new fossil evidence. And yet they never seem to notice that if creationism were true, there shouldn't be any of that fossil evidence to require accommodation.



Could it be that the gods have played a cruel joke on you?

 

[Old Rocks]

The fossil record is a wonderful thing in that it is constantly being increased and added to. Look at the recent feathered dinosaurs from China.

We have so many differant ways of dating material now that nobody accepts at valid a single type of dating on any item, whether fossil or statum. In fact, with the development of the many ways of dating differant fossils and strata, we have come to understand much of the fossil record that was confusing before.

But if you already have your mind made up that it was all 'created', none of this is revelent. Willfull ignorance is ugly in any setting.

 

[PoliticalChic]

The fossil record is a wonderful thing in that it is constantly being increased and added to. Look at the recent feathered dinosaurs from China.

We have so many differant ways of dating material now that nobody accepts at valid a single type of dating on any item, whether fossil or statum. In fact, with the development of the many ways of dating differant fossils and strata, we have come to understand much of the fossil record that was confusing before.

But if you already have your mind made up that it was all 'created', none of this is revelent. Willfull ignorance is ugly in any setting.

You continue to pay attention, Rocks....and I'm gonna teach you guys about science, Darwin, and evolution.



Take notes.

 

[Hollie]

The fossil record is a wonderful thing in that it is constantly being increased and added to. Look at the recent feathered dinosaurs from China.

We have so many differant ways of dating material now that nobody accepts at valid a single type of dating on any item, whether fossil or statum. In fact, with the development of the many ways of dating differant fossils and strata, we have come to understand much of the fossil record that was confusing before.

But if you already have your mind made up that it was all 'created', none of this is revelent. Willfull ignorance is ugly in any setting.

You continue to pay attention, Rocks....and I'm gonna teach you guys about science, Darwin, and evolution.



Take notes.

That's quite a fantasy coming from a Harun Yahya groupie.

 

[PoliticalChic]

The fossil record is a wonderful thing in that it is constantly being increased and added to. Look at the recent feathered dinosaurs from China.

We have so many differant ways of dating material now that nobody accepts at valid a single type of dating on any item, whether fossil or statum. In fact, with the development of the many ways of dating differant fossils and strata, we have come to understand much of the fossil record that was confusing before.

But if you already have your mind made up that it was all 'created', none of this is revelent. Willfull ignorance is ugly in any setting.

You continue to pay attention, Rocks....and I'm gonna teach you guys about science, Darwin, and evolution.



Take notes.

That's quite a fantasy coming from a Harun Yahya groupie.

Oh....I didn't intend to leave you out....I'll take on the Sisyphean task of trying to educate you, as well.


First lesson: try to stay away from your first impulse- lying.


Treat it as though it was a 12-Step.
Begin by saying "My name is Hollie, and I am a liar."


See....you feel better already.

 

[orogenicman]

You continue to pay attention, Rocks....and I'm gonna teach you guys about science, Darwin, and evolution.



Take notes.

That's quite a fantasy coming from a Harun Yahya groupie.

Oh....I didn't intend to leave you out....I'll take on the Sisyphean task of trying to educate you, as well.


First lesson: try to stay away from your first impulse- lying.


Treat it as though it was a 12-Step.
Begin by saying "My name is Hollie, and I am a liar."


See....you feel better already.

Projection is not a valid argument. Next.