RE: What are birds (Full Version)

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Kathegetes -> RE: What are birds (5/24/2008 7:13:20 PM)

Scientists did not predict that feathered, non-avian dinosaurs would not be found. They merely pointed out that they hadn't been yet. Science requires evidence.

But in fact way back in 1868, "Darwin's Bulldog" Huxley did suggest that birds arose from theropod dinosaurs. Since the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx, the first fossil of which was found in 1859, is now considered a dinosaur, it's ironic that feathered dinosaurs were actually discovered near the beginning of paleontology.



drmark -> RE: What are birds (5/24/2008 7:55:53 PM)

quote:

Predictions based on evolution are shown valid, while those based upon creationism always prove false.
Nonsense, Kathegetes! Creationism predicts organisms will always reproduce after their kinds. Please show us just one example of any offspring arising from a different kind of parents.



scutus -> RE: What are birds (5/24/2008 8:58:48 PM)

I will if you tell me what a kind is.



drmark -> RE: What are birds (5/24/2008 9:30:33 PM)

Oh, c'mon scutus, you know that I can use circular reasoning just as well as any evolutionist. The fact is that creationism makes many valid scientific predictions and it's ludicrous to state that "those based upon creationism always prove false." You or Kath should start a new thread if you want to refute creationist predictions.



drj11 -> RE: What are birds (5/24/2008 10:12:57 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: drmark

Oh, c'mon scutus, you know that I can use circular reasoning just as well as any evolutionist. The fact is that creationism makes many valid scientific predictions and it's ludicrous to state that "those based upon creationism always prove false." You or Kath should start a new thread if you want to refute creationist predictions.


Creationism doesn't make predictions. There is no coherent theory of creationism at all! It doesn't exist.



Jhud -> RE: What are birds (5/25/2008 11:46:49 PM)

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Similarly, ID advocate Behe predicted that whales with legs would never be found, yet was almost immediately humiliated when fossil whales with legs were in fact discovered, right where scientists expected to find them, on the Indian subcontinent, where the ancient Tethys Sea once lay between Asia & India, then starting to collide with Asia, which raised the Himalayas.


Actually, interesting case that. Behe didn't predict anything exactly, he simply asked in 1994:

if random evolution is true, there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the Mesonychid
and the ancient whale. Where are they? It seems like quite a coincidence that of all the intermediate species that must have
existed between Mesonychid and whale, only species that are very similar to the end species have been found."

page 61. (MJ Behe in Darwinism, Science or Philisophy?) © 1994.

Interestingly, since then Mesonychids have been widely dismissed by evolutionary biologists as the ancestors of whales.

Who'd a thunk it?



gluadys -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 12:35:50 AM)

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ORIGINAL: drmark

quote:

Predictions based on evolution are shown valid, while those based upon creationism always prove false.
Nonsense, Kathegetes! Creationism predicts organisms will always reproduce after their kinds. Please show us just one example of any offspring arising from a different kind of parents.


The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.

I know of no TOE prediction regarding kinds.



drmark -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 9:19:11 AM)

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The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.
How can speciation occur if all offspring are the same species as their parents?



drj11 -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 10:55:16 AM)

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ORIGINAL: drmark

quote:

The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.
How can speciation occur if all offspring are the same species as their parents?



Imagine you are going bald (maybe you have, or haven't or never will I don't know), losing one hair at a time. At which single hair out of the thousands and thousands do you finally say, thats it, I've got a decent sized chrome dome?

We wouldnt expect an organism to give birth to offspring that was reproductively isolated from rest of the population... But they might be reproductively isolated from the organisms from many thousands of generations in the past.



drmark -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 11:23:49 AM)

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wouldnt expect
quote:

might be
Wonderful science you got there, drj! [8|]

Now, does anyone else have a scientific explanation for speciation, or just more fairy tales to share?



gluadys -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 12:15:09 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: drmark

quote:

The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.
How can speciation occur if all offspring are the same species as their parents?



Speciation occurs when a permanent reproductive barrier appears between different groups of the same species. Sometimes this follows the appearance of a temporary reproductive barrier, commonly geographic separation.

Consider for example, that a group of mice might float across a river on a natural raft and so be separated from the parent species on the other side. At this point they are still the same species. If they got back across the river, or more of the parent species got across the river, they could still mate and successfully produce offspring.

But what if they remain isolated? There is no gene flow between the two groups. Each continues to accumulate mutations over the generations, but they are different in each group, and lead in some cases to different adaptations, different ways of life. The isolated group, for example, may need to adapt to a different sort of food supply. Or to different predators that lead to different coloring for camouflage, or different avoidance techniques.

So, it becomes, over time, somewhat different in appearance and behaviour from the original group . If the two are brought together now, they may refuse to mate the "strange" mice of the other population. This is called "assortative mating" and can be a permanent reproductive barrier assuring that the two groups will remain essentially separated. Assortative mating may be re-inforced by natural selection acting against hybrids. Eventually, the divergence between the groups may lead not only to lack of interbreeding (which is sufficient to establish a species) but to the inability of partners from the different groups to reproduce successfully.

Speciation that follows this pathway is called "allopathic speciation". It is not the only way speciation happens, as geographic separation is not essential. But a reproductive barrier is.

In any case, it is not necessary for any individual to be of a different species than its parent.



drj11 -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 1:08:06 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: drmark

quote:

wouldnt expect
quote:

might be
Wonderful science you got there, drj! [8|]

Now, does anyone else have a scientific explanation for speciation, or just more fairy tales to share?


More hand waving and dismissals from the good doctor when he's shown not to know what he's talking about.

Perhaps you should read the first couple chapters of a textbook on evolution.. its pretty amazing that a doctor has such ridiculous and misinformed notions on speciation and what evolution actually says about it. Utterly ridiculous, especially given the voracity with which you attempt (poorly) to rebuke evolution. If you are going to disagree with it, at least educate yourself enough to understand most of what it says. As it is, you are disagreeing with a theory that doesnt exist.



drmark -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 3:07:17 PM)

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The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.
quote:

In any case, it is not necessary for any individual to be of a different species than its parent.
Say what?!

quote:

As it is, you are disagreeing with a theory that doesnt exist.
And one big AMEN! to that, drj! I've never seen so many permutations and machinations of any one so-called theory in my entire scientific career. Who knows what any of you are talking about at this point!



swan42 -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 3:13:20 PM)

quote:


quote:


The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.
In any case, it is not necessary for any individual to be of a different species than its parent.

Say what?!


Yep. It is not uncommon for the offspring of plants to become entirely new species incapable of breeding with other plants of the same species as their parents. (and in case gluadys actually meant to say "different" instead of "same", the definition of a particular species is fuzzy from one generation to the next)



gluadys -> RE: What are birds (5/26/2008 5:05:58 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: swan42

quote:


quote:


The theory of evolution also predicts that offspring will always be the same species as their parents and that descendants will always fall into the same clade as their ancestors.
In any case, it is not necessary for any individual to be of a different species than its parent.

Say what?!


Yep. It is not uncommon for the offspring of plants to become entirely new species incapable of breeding with other plants of the same species as their parents. (and in case gluadys actually meant to say "different" instead of "same", the definition of a particular species is fuzzy from one generation to the next)


No, I meant to say "different". I am aware of the special case of speciation via hybridization in plants, and of such instances as the nylonase bacteria, which do produce a new species within a single generation of reproduction, but I think you will agree there are other equally, if not more common, patterns of speciation in which the parents and children are the same species though more distant ancestors are not. In the allopatric pattern I described above, there is no point at which you can say a child is a different species than its parent.



DanJames -> RE: What are birds (5/30/2008 9:03:01 PM)

I don't think that evolutionists have it all wrong in their concepts of how speciation occurs. Even as a young-earth creationist our model of history has to include some amount of speciation since the Flood since Noah brought only representatives of the several land-dwelling, lunged kinds. These representatives no doubt speciated into the species that we see today. The mechanism, definition, and extent of speciation is something that we can disagree on while still agreeing that it must have happened in Earth's history.

quote:

quote:

ORIGINAL: scutus

I will if you tell me what a kind is.


The definition of a "kind" is only slightly less cloudy than the definition of a species. The one definition that is at least not disagreeable is that it is "the descendants of an originally created group of organisms which could originally interbreed." That just about covers it because God created organisms to multiply according to their kinds. What does that mean for us today? Well it tells us very little because even among a kind there is speciation, or rather, representatives of a kind which can no longer interbreed with other representatives of its kind. Which is what we can all agree is a species.
A more secular word for "kind" might give you peace. The word is "syngameon". Though a qualifying part of this taxon is that the group be interfertile, but what isn't fuzzy about taxonomy, anyway?



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