I note many public evolutionists, Prothero and Shermer and many others always stress the cases of vestigial parts in marine mammals as evidence for evolutionary biology.
Yet in reality this is a sampling error that in fact makes the opposite case against evolution.
I agree marine mamnmals once were land lovers and only later gained features to surbvve in the water. Not the impossible steps said by evolutionists, as Berlinski demonstrates, but some other mechanism.
Anyways evolutionists persusde themselves, and try to persuade others, that the real changes found in marine mammals proves creatures changed greatly and by Darwins method.
Yet the great truth is that for all the living and fossil biology that is observed at least 99%% has no vestigial features whatsoever. If all biology evolved then all biology should be crawling with remaining bits but in fact its a great missing anatomy. There are no vestigial bits save in very few special cases like marine mammals.
Therefore if evolutionists use these few cases to make the evolution case then in strict sampling disipline they actually make the opposite case. If finding a few vestigial bits is to prove evolution then the glorious ascence makes the true case that evolution didn’t happen because it should be that vestigial bits are the norm and not the exception.
So i propose its a sampling error to say vestigial bits of marine mammals prove evolution and in fact it must be proving the opposite.
I think this is a good point unless someone can show otherwise.
AGAIN:
If I had to guess I would go by their looks and environment
Frankie,
Yes, lineages have to die as well as persist. I accept the refinement; it hardly contradicts the expectation.
Frankie,
Never judge a cow by its looks or the company it keeps.
There isn’t any expectation
They don’t keep whales as company
Frankie,
Yes, Knox, your go-to expert. I mean, he’s probably right as a very broad statement, but there will be plenty of areas of the tree that conform to basic expectation. And you can distinguish them by testing the tree hypothesis with data. The basic expectation remains (subject to homoplasy/LGT/loss) a branching tree. The neat thing about SINEs is that they pretty much avoid confusion by the things in brackets.
There isn’t any expectation. Evolutionism tries to explain the evidence. It doesn’t expect anything but perhaps change or stasis
Frankie,
The expectation is a branching tree of descent, if descent is vertical (parent-child), and not every lineage survives. I see no reason to deny this.
That is your opinion. The reason to deny it is due to the fact that evolution is too complex to be depicted by a simple branching tree.
Something else to consider, again from Darwin:
Frankie,
It tries to explain why everything appears (subject to caveats) to conform to a branching tree of descent, right down to the very molecules in DNA. Simply saying ‘I see no tree’, or ‘evolution doesn’t expect a tree’ seem on rather weak footing. I see a tree, and it is exactly what I’d expect if most descent were vertical. You see different and expect different, fine; why are you bothering anyone else with it?
Frankie,
Descent is not complex. Descent is very simple. A tree works great, provided there’s not too much noise.
From noted anti-evolutionist Darwin, whose only diagram was a branching tree, and whose conclusions led him to Common Descent? That Darwin?
Some traces of descent are inevitably lost. Indeed, every change is a loss of ancestry information. But while sufficient signal remains (as is the case with Cetartiodactyla), there is no reason to be concerned. It’s the standard Creationist some=all fallacy. Some signals are erased, so they all are. But if they were all erased, there would be no evidence of a tree, so recovery of trees is sufficient to persuade us that the signals have not, in fact, been universally erased. Again, this is the neat thing about SINEs. If they had been erased, they could not be identified as such, and used (in tandem with flanking sequence, potentially subject to the same process of erasure) as binary signals.
Allan Miller,
A tree is too simple. And Linnaean taxonomy can make a branching tree pattern and it doesn’t have anything to do with evolution.
Family trees, ie vertical inheritance, doesn’t produce nice branching trees.
Maybe a bush, but definitely not a tree. And Darwin’s diagram was very, very simple
Frankie,
Too simple for what? A simple tree is exactly what you’d expect if lineages gave rise to descendant lineages with occasional speciation.
Hmmmm. Now why does Linnaean taxonomy give a branching tree pattern, from observation of nature? Anyone any ideas? If only there were a process that reliably produced a branching tree pattern, and weren’t too complex to do so.
Already dealt with. Sexual species can give neat monophyletic clades and coalescent nodes (a branching tree, IOW) with no trouble at all.
Frankie,
A bush is simply a small tree … ! Are we going to argue about the lack of trunk and bark, now?
Allan Miller,
Bushes have branches that are all tangled
Allan Miller,
Sexual species can leave a mess, as opposed to a tree
It is based on a common design. It doesn’t have anything to do with Common Descent nor evolution. That is why it has all but been abandoned in favor of phylogeny, as phylogeny allegedly shows evolutionary relationships.
Family trees do not produce nice branching trees. And the way you “dealt” with that was to say something you cannot support
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_10
I do not wish to prove anything wrong. In fact I would say that for any scientist who puts forward a certain hypothesis or theory, it is incumbent on them to come up with ways in which it could be wrong. And they should encourage others to do likewise.
A few examples. Its growth and development, its compulsion to move and to eat, these come from within. The feeling of hunger that drives an animal to eat. This is the animal’s inner feeling, it cannot be experienced from without by any external being.
Life is much to complex for us to say that there is only one possible history for the evolution of cetaceans. (Unless you know different because you have a time machine). How many times has science progressed by outdated theories being superceded?
Indeed, this happens every time the evidence causes some alternative explanation or model to be better supported. You DO understand, I hope, that any significantly different history must STILL fully explain all the evidence available today, right?
If you look at scientific history, you find that whenever well supported theories have been superseded, it has been by a theory that extends, rather than discards, the prior theory. Apples didn’t stop falling when Einstein’s gravity superseded Newton’s, and Newton’s formulas are close enough for most practical purposes even today.
You ought to be aware that this is inherent in the way science is conducted. Almost always, several scientists (or teams) are doing research in the same specific areas, and there is competition for publication, for funding, and for prestige. In other words, they are in competition, and where they disagree, they commonly devise testable hypotheses which will (hopefully) show their interpretation to be more nearly correct.
And Elizabeth can explain very clearly the role of the null hypothesis in forming and testing hypotheses. Basically, this means experiments are constructed with the null (the hypothesis is wrong) as the default, so that the experiment produces positive support, rather than just lack of conflicting evidence.
Flint,
You don’t have a theory of evolution. Both Newton and Einstein posited exacting equations, ie a way to quantify their ideas. Natural selection doesn’t have that and neither do drift and neutral changes.
What are the testable hypotheses for natural selection, drift and/ or neutral changes producing any bacterial flagellum?
If you are saying biology is not physics, I agree. If you are saying biology is not science, then I disagree. When you are able to construct detailed models with consistently high predictive accuracy, you are probably doing something right.
LoL! Flint conflates evolution with biology and evolutionism cannot be modeled. How do you model blind and mindless processes producing something like a bacterial flagellum?
Biology, as in the study of living things, is science. Evolutionism is not
Your side can’t account for biology.
As I understand it, the theory predicts the development of variations, resulting from mutation followed by selection. There is no theory able to predict specific variations. The theory says that given variation in environmental pressure, some future mutation will confer relative reproductive advantage.
I can fairly accurately predict that at least one home run will be hit in tomorrow’s game. If you demand that I predict who will hit it, I will be less accurate. If you demand I predict which fan will end up with the ball, I can’t predict at all.
Flint,
So you can’t answer the question. Got it.
That’s too vague to be a theory, let alone scientific.
Evolution is how biology works. Evolution can be modeled. “Evolutionism” (a creationist coining simply meaning “wrong”) can be predicted with extremely high accuracy.
Evolutionary processes often result in new features, new structures, etc. WHICH new features or structures, can’t be predicted. If I shoot a bullet into the air, I can predict it will fall back down. If you demand I predict that location to within a thousandth of an inch, I can only laugh.
Yeah, it’s not all precise like those ID predictions. Oh wait….. 😀
I understand that your question, which assumes the wrong answer before we start, cannot possibly be answered to your satisfaction. My goal is to understand a process. Your goal is to deny it. Your task is much easier.
Flint,
Evolutionism = blind watchmaker evolution and it cannot be modeled.
How do you model blind and mindless processes producing something like a bacterial flagellum?
Answer the question, I dare you
LoL! You are full of it, Flint. I am trying to understand the process but it seems no one does. I have been at this for decades and that is why I know that evolutionism is vacuous. And in no way does my question assume anything. It is a question. Period.
Now I know that neither you nor anyone else will answer it but that is because I know your position is vacuous.
LOL! Good old FrankenJoe. If you can’t tell him the winning lottery number before the winning number is drawn then everything you know about the number selection process is wrong.
Well you obviously know “whatever it is” I am “doing”. I am asking questions. As far as I know you are a scientist and so is it not your job to test hypotheses?
I, on the other hand, am not a scientist. So is it your opinion that I do not have the right to ask questions because I do not have the means to personally test them?
And you in fact have provided details that agree what I wrote above, and I will get to that. But first here is something to think about. (Although, obviously, you already know all of this)
Animal life is believed to have evolved through stages. It advanced from a water-breathing fish-like existence, to amphibious, then reptile-like, and on to warm-blooded higher animals. I say “advanced” because regardless of what KN thinks it is an advance. The latter has progressed through all the stages, but the former groupings have only progressed through the stages preceding them. Fish have remained in the same type of environment as their ancestors.
Animal types radiate from the beginning of each stage. Some would say they fill newly available niches on entering an uncharted environment. For example amphibians range from axotols which retain an aqueous existence to gliding frogs which live in trees have no qualms about taking to the air. (According to Wikipedia this behaviour has evolved independently at various locations)
Animal evolution shows a path from water to land to air, and at each stage they have gone through a similar, although more restricted path. Reptiles have had representatives in all three environments as have mammals, and as have birds to a lesser extent.
So to continue, I said that whales could be descendents of animals who never fully left the water but remained in the shallows. You have argued that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales. Well that is a good start as hippos (the clue is in the name, Hippopotamus amphibius) have never really left the water. They spend most of their time in the water, have no problem giving birth in the water and their young can suckle under water. So it would not be too much of a stretch to argue that the common ancestor of hippos and whales was a creature that lived in the shallows. What about the ancestors? You point me in the direction of Protocetidae. Well do these animals give any indication that they would have been at home moving around in the shallows?
Here is an artists impression of Rodhocetus
I don’t think there can be any doubt about that.
That means nothing to me other than that you can’t answer my question. You apparently know nothing even about baraminology and are capable only of cutting and pasting. Why should anyone bother to engage with you on any scientific question? Send me a baraminologist.
Sure, darlin’.
But all of them are descendants of the first placental mammal, which was an exclusively land-dwelling furry critter from 65 million years ago.
The ancestors evolved and radiated on land for millions of years before any of their descendants ventured towards a more aquatic life.
Rhodocetus is about 20 million years down the line from the universal placental mammal land-dwelling ancestor.
It has never been in doubt that whales, being placental mammals, were descended from the same little land-dwelling critter as all other mammals — mice, lions, giraffes, and us all. The scientific question merely was which specific path of descent did they have, that is, who were their nearest relatives at the time they began to leave land, and who are their nearest remaining relatives now.
Leaving land, becoming fully aquatic, started slowly with hunting/feeding in water with obligate sleeping and pup bearing on land — as river otters and beaver are doing nowadays. And we know that the recent ancestors of otters were fully land dwelling — just as the first mammal ancestors of whales were.
Our current-human species won’t last long enough to see the outcome of the otter or beaver “leave-land experiment”. But I hope that 20 million years hence, some replacement idiot doesn’t look at the fully-aquatic descendant of some otters and imagine “they didn’t evolve from a land creature”.
John Harshman,
LoL! You can’t find a way to test your claims and you don’t know what a nested hierarchy is. Why should anyone bother to engage with you on any scientific question?
hotshoe_,
Nice story, however we are interested in science
We? You and the broken toasters?
These are not questions. Certainly no scientist is asking them. I’m kind of surprised that Harshman continues to try to inform you, since this is clearly not possible and never has been.
LoL! Who says they are questions? You have all avoided the questions. You think that by avoiding them you have answered them.
The desperation grows
You did, remember. You referred to your nonsense as a “scientific question.” But you were right, nobody can engage you on an actual scientific question. I’m surprised anyone has made the effort.
Reference please. You aren’t being coherent.
I referred to your nonsense as unscientific pap. And I proved it by showing that you will avoid scientific questions that pertain to your position. And we all know why.
If this isn’t a scientific question:
How do you model blind and mindless processes producing something like a bacterial flagellum?
Then evolutionism, ie evolution via blind and mindless processes like natural selection, drift and/ or neutral changes isn’t a scientific proposition.
Evolutionary processes produce features that increase chances of surviving to reproduce.
The flagellum helps bacteria survive to reproduce.
What evolution doesn’t do is aim for specific pre-planned goals like humans. Ask Virgil FrankenJoe, he’ll tell you!