I've just come back from my introductory biology classroom in which I've been trying hard to convince students of an important historical fact: the scientists, especially the geologists, who came up with the idea that the earth was old were working in a Christian tradition, and they came up with their ideas because they needed to explain the evidence, not because they were driven by theological considerations or because they had been bribed by the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. Sometimes you just have to put them in the shoes of a geologist in 1850 to get them to see the true motives. Then I discover that ChrisR is also trying to make the point, that it's the evidence not ideology that informs our conclusions.
It's our studies of the rock record that have led geologists to propose that the Earth is so unimaginably old, not the edicts of the Evil Secular Conspiracy. When we observe huge angular unconformities, where rocks have been tilted almost vertically, eroded and then covered with flat-lying rocks, we see that they require a large period of time to have formed. When thermodynamics tells us that it would take tens of thousands of years for an ingneous intrusion hundreds of metres across to solidify from lava, we assume that that means it tooks tens of thousands of years to form. When present day estimates of sea floor spreading - measured in mm per year - match those estimated from the increased radiometric ages of the ocean floor away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, we conclude the Atlantic Ocean has been formed after tens of millions of years of slow continental drift. The list goes on and on; and useful as the fossil record is, I could continue for quite a while without having to mention the E-word.
I was also trying to get across another piece of evidence that the biologists were trying (and before Darwin, failing) to interpret, one that is quite ironic now. One of the big questions before natural historians was to explain all the gradations of form in the natural world — why are there so many species of mouse, for instance, that vary in little ways, and why are there 'mouse-like' forms that are larger, like rats? Why is the world swimming in transitional forms, and why aren't animals more distinct from one another, in other words?
It's a sign of the degeneracy of the modern creationist that instead of grappling with these questions honestly, as the 19th century creationists/natural historians did, they instead simply deny the existence of the evidence. Like Chris says, rocks aren't coy about their age, and I'd add that organisms aren't hiding their relationships.
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Wasn't "degenerate" a word we weren't using? http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/entartete_kirche.php
I mean, not that I disagree with the substance of the paragraph.
I dunno - if I were having a relationship with a "large, mouse-like form," I would probably hide it.
Oddly enough, Cute Overload has another cephalopod. They find it seahorse-like, which is kind of the opposite of the mouse-like critters. Cephalopods do have a basic structure but they vary quite a bit.
Why is the world swimming in transitional forms
This falls clearly into the category of unsupported materialistic assertions. That is, unless you can show me a half-cat, half-dog. Can you?
Didn't think so.
In addition to being intellectually honest--that is, realising the evidence not did not fit the predominate hypothesis--they proposed various other hypothesis which (1) did fit; and, quite relevant to some of the strange cretinist claims today, (2) all this was done using nothing more sophisticated than am optical microscope. That is, there wasn't any carbon dating (not that it's much use here (but try convincing some cretinists of that!)), and indeed "atomic" radiation wasn't even known (at best, Maxwell, Faraday, et al. were still puzzling out the relationship between electricity and magnetism). There were no electronic computers, only slide rules and tables of logarithms, no (useful) submarines, no robots, and so on. The work was done by sound reasoning based on "easily" observed (and often collected in museums) evidence.
And of course the evidence still exists; visit your local museum!
PZ's not German, so I think he's allowed. Besides, creationists are degenerate :-)
Anyway, this post shows what's so great about science: you can enter with any bias, background, messed-up idea, whatever, but as long as you do the work and follow the evidence where it leads, you can be a scientist. How wonderfully inclusive is that?
A belated kudos to the pre-20th century natural philosophers who had to break away from oppressive dogma to find the truth.
(Emphasis mine.) Do you have students resisting these points? Arguing against them? Just curious.
So, creationists think the conclusions of modern geology and evolution are driven by the religious attitudes of scientists, not evidence. I'm no psychologist, but that sounds like projection to me.
Which is not what is meant by transitional form. Do try to keep up.
Oh, don't you guys know that transitional forms are only transitional for as long as they haven't been discovered? As soon as there's evidence they exist they cease to be transitional. It's lovely the way the gaps in the fossil record keep multiplying with every new find we make!
Exactly. It is the evidence that produced doubts, not the doubters that produced evidence.
It was discovering for myself the evidence of evolution and the discoveries being made about the cosmos that led me to become an atheist. I was quite sad to have to give up the idea of a god and heaven and all that stuff but in the face of what I now knew I would be deluding myself if I continued in any kind of religious belief.
I just want to make a recommendation for an interesting read on topic. I found the book "The Map That Changed The World" by Simon Winchester to be an easy, engaging read that deals well with the time period when scientist (and others) first began to realize the nature of the different strata in the Earth's crust, etc. A friend bought it for me because I collect antique maps, but it ended up being appealing more because of it's historic and geologic nature than it's cartographical import. Look it up.
Why is it creationists seem to always want to ask for evidence that would disprove evolution as a proof for evolution? A naturally occurring half-cat, half-dog would throw a serious monkey wrench into the theory of evolution, as evolution doesn't work that way.
And then, when you do show them transitional forms (technically, every form is transitional, as no form is an endpoint) such as neanderthals or various other forms in humanity's ancestry, they start making up stuff to dismiss the transitional form as fully human or fully ape (or rather, what we colloquially think of as an ape), even though it's clearly not the case. Creationists seem to keep their goalposts on motorized platforms for quick relocation.
I agree that "The Map That Changed The World" is actually a really substantive book. The history in it is pretty good...and so is the geology. Whereas this is not often the case in popular science books, this one is a good read.
NJ,
You might want to check on your sarcasm meter. I think it's on the fritz.
Which is not what is meant by transitional form. Do try to keep up.
Of course, you are right. I have not seen any claim that cats and dogs are related in that way. I should have, more correctly asked for you to show me a half-whale, half-cow. That is one of your claims, no? That whales evolved from ungulates?
terryf,
Jesus, were you serious?? If so, then, NJ, I totally apologize. And you, terryf, can go here for some learnin':http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC216_1.html
terryf,
Wow. The lack of humility is quite profound. I can't imagine stumbling incoherently into a biblical circle jerk and claim to know more about the subject than the people there. If you're going to make a statement here, be sure that you base it on something other than creationist propaganda...you're comment betrays your ignorance of the subject and demands that you return immediately to elementary school science class. The desks might be a bit of a tight fit, but I suspect the cost-benefit ratio would be in your favor. I would recommend not embarrassing yourself further.
Somebody wanna invite Jim to read this thread? He's convinced (despite his protestations that he's actually read up on evolutionary theory) that the ToE is an a priori assumption that the evidence is made to fit by close-minded 'Darwinists'.
I'd do it myself, but I find him to be a typical, hypocritical IDiot, and can't seem to address him without remarking on his character (or lack thereof).
So, you aren't going to show me a Whow?
Psych!
terryf, you're joking? ... Bloody hell...
Cretinist: "There are no transitional forms between A and B. This is a problem for Darwinism."
Scientist: "There is so. Here is C."
Cretinist: "There are no transitional forms between A and C, nor between C and B. There. Now you have two problems for Darwinism!"
terryf, you're joking? ... Bloody hell...
Forgive me, but I didn't take zoology in engineering school, so I am not sure how names for so-called transitionals are constructed. If it is the concatenation of predecessor-ancestor, then I guess they would be called Cales instead of Whows.
Maybe the Sea Lion and Walrus are Whows...
They look like land mammals transitioning to sea mammals to me.
That wasn't hard.
Speak of intellectually dishonest religious nuts, and they will come!
Evolution does not predict there will ever be half dogs half cats or that a dog will give rise to a cat. If you knew basic high school biology you would have known that.
What it does predict is that the dog and cat had a common ancestor in the past. The fossil record, DNA sequence data, embryology, etc. all support this prediction.
As to transitional forms, they are ubiquitous. We are all transitional forms, came from somewhere and are going somewhere else.
For some obvious ones, how about whales with legs, birds such as Archaeopteryx with teeth and a reptilian tail, or the well documented protohuman to human fossil record.
Ray C.,
You forgot the next and most "logical" conclusion...
...and therefore god exists.
MikeP, that Talk Origins page links to one truly crazy website as part of the references for land mammal to whale evolution. I'll trust that the scientific information is accurate, but sheesh. It features prominent screeds against the "atheist's marxist-socialist holocaust" and describes WWII as war a of "atheism vs. god". And he seems to have some Intelligent Design sympathies (conceiving of god as "tinkerer" in evolution. Huh?)
And wow... ANOTHER engineer who doesn't accept evolution.
What's up with those guys?
No, no, no, you've all got it wrong. Cows evolved into Packer fans. It's all in the cheese-wedge document links below:
http://dontbotherlookingcuzimadeitup/funnythoughinnit.com
and
http://illdoanythingtoslamthepackers/vikingfan.com
:) :) :) :)
Maybe the Sea Lion and Walrus are Whows...
They look like land mammals transitioning to sea mammals to me.
The only problem is that sea lions bark, while cows moo. So maybe sea lions are transitional between whales and dogs, or Whogs.
Mheh.
terryf: "There are no transitional forms between ungulates and whales. This is a problem for Darwinism."
Ray C.: "There is so. Here is Ambulocetus."
Now I expect terryf to come back and say: "There are no transitional forms between ungulates and Ambulocetus, nor between Ambulocetus and whales. There. Now you have two problems for Darwinism!"
sigh. This engineer hangs his head in shame, again. It's so strange to me that these (not True) Engineers crawl out of the woodwork. Apparently there wasn't as much thinking going on as I imagined. Or I was doing ALL the thinking.
Sheesh. Y'all've been punked. What next?
Say, if the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus came from the Giant Pacific Octopus, why are there still Giant Pacific Octopodes?
And, hey, the bible says that God wrote the bible. That should be good enough proof for anyone that God wrote the bible, because God wouldn't lie about writing the bible when he wrote the bible, now would he?
Ray C.: "There is so. Here is Ambulocetus."
That is an alligator, silly. It isn't even a mammal. No wonder I win debates at every forum I go to.
I think we are looking at self selection here. One of my minor criticisms of creos is that they are setting up their children to fail. A substandard education filled with pseudoscience lies and ruthless suppression of any tendency towards questioning or critical thought in a complex, fast moving world, will do that. They end up sort of like dumb robots.
So they have to avoid the biological sciences including medical related fields, astronomy, physics, geology, and paleontology. So what is left? Engineering, law, McDonalds, Walmart, and mowing lawns I guess. All fields where those annoying facts that scientists have discovered over the last 2 centuries can't break down the wall between their delustions and reality.
I knew a guy who was married to a woman who was a cross between a harpie and a she-devil.
Poor guy, she left an indelible mark on him.
I called her a "Sharpie."
That is an alligator, silly. It isn't even a mammal. No wonder I win debates at every forum I go to.
It's not a mammal? Can I get a reprint of your article whereby you reclassified it?
This guy has got to be a parody. She/He/It just did the equivalent of walking into a Christian discussion group and saying, "You guys are just being obtuse...Jesus was a girl...jeeze...everyone knows that. What's wrong with you?"
i'm not sure why you bother with turds like terryf.
its not that they can't understand, its that they don't want to.
while statements such as "the half-dog half-cat" comment are ignorant they are also purposed deception. People like terryf actually purposefully lie, deceive, cheat, steal and do whatever is necessary to maintain their beliefs. Its a sad commentary, but there's nothing you can do about it, except delete the troll and move on. people like terryf can't be helped.
Yes, you "win" all discussions by being a delusional liar. It is a creationist thing. Ambulocetus was a mammal with a superficial resemblance to a crocodile. Just like bats are mammals with a superficial resemblance to birds or dragon flies.
BTW, I don't believe you are in engineering school unless it is a trade school for electricians or something. You don't come across as very bright. In fact, you come across as a home shooled teen ager trolling.
Ambulocetus was an alligator.
The Earth is flat.
Earthquakes are caused by the Chinese jumping up and down in sync.
terryf is within a parsec of a clue.
Can I get an OM award for multiple false statements in a post?
In fact, you come across as a home shooled teen ager trolling.
Would it make a difference if I told you my name is Russell and I'm a lawyer?
[Ambulocetus] is an alligator, silly.
Right. An alligator with hooves and a whale-like skull. The biologists who studied the original bones can't tell a reptile from a mammal, while Duane Gish can look at a few pictures of the bones and pronounce it to be a reptile.
[creationist]
thats not true! they use fossils to date rocks and rocks to date fossils!!! OMG evilutionists tell lies about there own lies!!! how wicked is that!!!??!
[/creationist]
Perhaps a question about all of these debates it has won. It seems pretty proud of them. List of dates and locations? Or, if they were online, maybe we could see a transcript or two?
No, of course not. You would still be a lying home school teenager out trolling. Don't the kids hang out at youtube and myspace these days? Why are you here?
I call hijinks.
terryf is just pushing buttons and yanking chains. Just the sort of thing undergraduate engineers do. I've got some great stories about the UBC EUS stunts, but that would be OT.
Shouldn't they be doing useful things with their time like making the windows in the earth science building at MIT do Tetris?
Nearly complete fossil skeleton of Ambulocetus.
Says Raven in #25 "We are all transitional forms..."
Great point for transition-deniers who want "proof" at cocktail parties.
Point directly at them and say something like "You yourself are a transitional form between your parents and your children. The changes in one generation are small, but that's exactly what the ToE predicts."
Terry the F has graduated to Trollville.
Congratulate him on his self propelled trip to the land of obscurity and relegation.
Actually, PZ, if I can make a recommendation you might want to consider a different tack. I like to emphasize that the miners and engineers who developed the geological time scale did so for practical reasons, to aid them in locating desirable mineral deposits, particularly coal. They did so within a Christian milieu and were no doubt no more or less devout as a group than others of their era---or, I suspect, ours. They didn't study the fossil record because they wanted to stick a fork in Genesis; they were interested in making money, pure and simple.
I call hijinks.
Thank you! What started as a throwaway sarcastic comment turned into an ad hoc experiment in Russell's Law. Seriously, people, wasn't "sea lions bark and cows moo" sufficiently absurd?
PS. quedpro, you kiss your momma with that mouth?
"[Ambulocetus] is an alligator, silly" and "Cales" and "Whows" oh my! I am all sorts of giggling over this guy - giant joke here!
. . . is an alligator, silly . . . Snort! Snurk! Giggle hysterically!
Terry,
Have you spent much time here?
Ever see a thread hijacked by a creationist?
They tend to start off exactly like that. If it talks like a duck or walks like a duck...
It gets treated like a duck.
The answer is no, thanks to Stogoe's Law(copyrighted, patent pending, trade secret, etc):
There exist no creationist parody statements on the internet sufficiently absurd to prevent some number of creationists from:
1)finding the argument convincing
and
2)copying the statement into their Plagiarized Arguments Folder for later use.
What? terryf, you've never tasted whale cheese?
http://ficlets.com/stories/157
The difficult part is to get the robotic milking machines to stay neutrally buoyant in the ten foot swells. The advantage is that you don't need to play music while you're milking because the whales sing their own songs.
As an alternative could I interest you in story of the evolution of elephants into mermaids?
http://www.sirenian.org/sirenians.html
Josh:
Doesn't work: the Green Building uses fluorescent lights which take a moment to turn on and off. There's too much flicker to make Tetris practicable.
Well said. Creationists are not interested in the "why" questions but merely want to filter the evidence through their pre-determined constructs. Prostitution of science. Very frustrating (understatement).
Hmm. I was in a meeting, so I didn't get to watch this thread develop. Two give-aways that suggested Terryf was joking:
1) Most creationists take themselves way too seriously to ever say something as chidingly humorous as "that is an alligator, silly"; and
2) S/he never complained about the rudeness of atheist forums (at least, not before admitting the hoax).
Thus, I propose an exception to Russell's Law, one which I propose be named "Brownian's But..." which reads, "But a true creationist will almost always complain about the dismissiveness with which their arguments are met, and attempt to use that to bolster their claim."
For example,
Non-creationist: "That's an incredibly stupid argument based on several fallacies (or misinterpretation of the data, fabrication or suppression of evidence, quote-mining, lies, or other deceptions.)"
Creationist: "How come Darwinists who call themselves 'rational' always resort to name-calling? It must be because I'm winning the debate!"
Well done, Terryf.
A creationist guest on a radio call-in show day before yesterday insisted to me (I'd called in) that "Evolution claims birds evolved from frogs." What can one do but laugh out loud?
The creationists lie, it's as simple as that.
Christian creationists most often even break one of the ten commandments in sweeping aside geologic work which tens of thousands of conscientious geoscientists have amassed. These Christian creationists misrepresent and calumnize their fellow man when they disparage the geologic work.
Creationism is thus morally bankrupt.
Honestly, I think they should make at least a little entomology required in the high school curriculum...somewhere...
There's nothing like trying to explain -why- precisely God would want 50 species of deerflies and horseflies (one taxonomic family) to all live in the same province together...
Would you settle for this piece of contrived engineering "art"?
Hah! I've got your "proof" right here, you yellow running creationist swine-elk!
Geez, I thought it was pretty obvious that Terry was kidding around from the get-go, but the sad truth is that after two or three such comments, it's very hard to tell parody from the real thing.
Hmmm, my last comment got held for review. Prolly cuz I was posting incontrovertible proof - PROOF, I SAY - that Evolution is both right and wrong at the same time, thanks to Schroedinger's ...
Well, you'll see.
Terryf, "unless you can show me a half-cat, half-dog"...
Ummm, you might want to take a close look at the Cheetah. While it is clearly in the Cat family, it has more than a few characteristics that are distinctly Dog-like, including some of the anatomy, and many of the behavioral habits (And no, behavior is NOT entirely governed by social structure, in many cases it is a logical necessity of physical structure, including brain archetecture).
Would it make a difference if I told you my name is Russell and I'm a lawyer?
No.
Lawyers are just the larval form of politicians.
Thank Zeus I'm not practising law any more. (Ain't gonna practise law no more, ain't gonna practise law no more ...)
Good trolling anyway. I waxed and waned about whether it was legit, but I admit I was taken in at the point where terryf finally came clean. I'm obviously insufficiently versed in the subtle distinctions that enable one to discern the difference between such parody posts and bona fide creationist posts whose content is just as stupid.
Blake in #57: damn...it used to work...
Ummm, you might want to take a close look at the Cheetah. While it is clearly in the Cat family, it has more than a few characteristics that are distinctly Dog-like
The cheetah is a cartoon marketing icon for a cheese flavored snack product. Jeesh. Next thing you'll be telling me that there really is such a bird as a toucan.
Yup, PZ and ChrisR do well to draw attention to this - the problem was well recognized by the 17th Cent. Wootton (a clergyman, I think) writing about 1700, acknowledges that it was getting difficult to reconcile the evidence emerging (literally) from the earth with what he called the "Mosaic account".
I still retain affection?/nostalgia? for my Christian upbringing and still associate the message with a profound respect for the truth: I squirm and fume at the transparent dishonesty of these modern defenders of the faith. I'd like to believe they're not typical Christians...
Peter C.
It has always seemed to me that science education in the grade school and high school levels should be a bit more about the history of the science, what our understanding was, and why it changed to what it is today.
The process of how we went from accepting the Biblical account of the age of the Earth to our current understanding is quite enlightening. Especially scince this was done by people who started out accepting the Biblical account. It's been a very long time since I was in school, but that is not how the classes were taught back then.
It is also useful to see how conflicting theories complete, fail and are abandoned, to be replaced by better ones. (Big Bang Theory vs Steady State Theory comes to mind)
At these levels, I think the true goal should be an understanding of how science has worked and continues to work, esp. at the grade school level.
rp
terryf: "This falls clearly into the category of unsupported materialistic assertions."
Clearly? At least its got material.
Let me mention Pakicetus and Ichthyolestes as the most famous representatives of the former, and Rodhocetus and Basilosaurus as the most famous representatives of the latter.
And no, whales are not cows, even though they are artiodactyls (even-toed "ungulates"). Their closest living (!) relatives are the hippos.
ROTFL!!! terryf, you have talent.
Straight into my quote folder.
Terryf, "unless you can show me a half-cat, half-dog"...
http://images.bcdb.com/pictures/other3/CatDog_logo.jpg
Ichthyic, check the links in comment #64 right here. :-)
[creationist]
thats not true! they use fossils to date rocks and rocks to date fossils!!! OMG evilutionists tell lies about there own lies!!! how wicked is that!!!??!
[/creationist]
Let me mention Pakicetus and Ichthyolestes as the most famous representatives of the former, and Rodhocetus and Basilosaurus as the most famous representatives of the latter.
And no, whales are not cows, even though they are artiodactyls (even-toed "ungulates"). Their closest living (!) relatives are the hippos.
ROTFL!!! terryf, you have talent.
Straight into my quote folder.