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Merged Icebear's Evolution Thread

This is a brand of antievolutionism I haven't seen before. Usually it's Christians preaching Christian doctrine, but this is coming from someone who said the sun originally didn't exist or was much farther away and the Earth orbited Jupiter and/or Saturn, and some of his/her arguments for that are based on the validity of parts of other religions. None of that necessarily contradicts evolution, but it does contradict standard Christian creationism!
 
Delvo said:
This is a brand of antievolutionism I haven't seen before. Usually it's Christians preaching Christian doctrine, but this is coming from someone who said the sun originally didn't exist or was much farther away and the Earth orbited Jupiter and/or Saturn, and some of his/her arguments for that are based on the validity of parts of other religions. None of that necessarily contradicts evolution, but it does contradict standard Christian creationism!
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Sounds suspiciously like Immanuel_VelikovskyWP. :eek:
 
Dinwar said:
If that find was of actual dinosaur soft tissue--a conclusion that is by no means widely agreed upon--it's not meat. Meat is muscle. The soft tissue is speculated to have been connective tissue, a completely different type of organ. There's still the very real possibility that what was found was mere microbial matter bearing no relation to dinosaurs.
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It is my understanding that there is no evidence to support a bacteria biofilm hypothesis to explain the soft tissue.

Influence of Microbial Biofilms on the Preservation of Primary Soft Tissue in Fossil and Extant Archosaurs

The identification of biomolecules in fossil vertebrate extracts from a specimen of Brachylophosaurus canadensis has shown the interpretation of preserved organic remains as microbial biofilm to be highly unlikely.
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Molecular analyses of dinosaur osteocytes support the presence of endogenous molecules

These data are the first to support preservation of multiple proteins and to present multiple lines of evidence for material consistent with DNA in dinosaurs, supporting the hypothesis that these structures were part of the once living animals
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Soft sheets of fibrillar bone from a fossil of the supraorbital horn of the dinosaur Triceratops horridus

This matrix possessed visible microstructures consistent with lamellar bone osteocytes. Some sheets of soft tissue had multiple layers of intact tissues with osteocyte-like structures featuring filipodial-like interconnections and secondary branching. Both oblate and stellate types of osteocyte-like cells were present in sheets of soft tissues and exhibited organelle-like microstructures.
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Am I wrong? Seems to me that science is approaching a new consensus. I have even read it is possible to use this new information to determine things such as estimates of genome size of extinct species, sex of individuals, and so on.
 
DuvalHMFIC said:
I've read through 5 pages of this thread, and I still don't know:

Do I get to eat a dinosaur or what?
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Ninja'd by Dinwar. Was going to point out that certain species of modern dinosaur are raised on farms for human consumption.

I wonder what Icebear thinks of that.
 
Floyt said:
Vortigern99 said:
It proves nothing of the sort! It's usually a congenital deformity, a fatty tumor with no relationship to simian tails.
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Hmm?
Le Wiki said:
Infrequently, a child is born with a "soft tail", which contains no vertebrae, but only blood vessels, muscles, and nerves, although there have been several documented cases of tails containing cartilage or up to five vertebrae.
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...which was my understanding. It may not be a fully formed tail, but it's certainly not a "fatty tumor"?
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Evidently there are several conditions and events that can lead to humans being born with tails, and thus a variety of physiological components, depending on the root cause and what kind of "tail" is being discussed.

Here is the most authoritative (seeming) and well-referenced article on the Net that I can find.

..."true humans tails" are composed of adipose tissue, connective tissue, muscle tissue, various nerves, and blood vessels (like any other true tail)....​

Since adipose tissue = fatty tissue, it would seem we're both correct and incorrect, insofar as our respective lists of component materials were incomplete. Yours left out "fatty tissue" and mine left out everything else!

Also:

... pseudo tail... account for at least one-third of all reports of human tails. These pseudo tails do not develop from the lack of regression of the embryonic tail, but rather arise from complications such as in Spinal Bifida, various lesions, or due to an elongated parasitic fetus.​


I suspect that the above "pseudo-tail" is the one comprised exclusively of fatty, tumor-like tissue, absent of muscle and nerves, which my original source (incorrectly) claimed was the material of which all human tails are made.

More to the point of the discussion we were having on the topic:

... the cause for the "true human tail" is due to the unsuccessful inhibition of the Wnt-3a gene during the early stages of human development....

... currently it is believed among evolutionary biologists that the "true tail" was lost during the evolution of the apes due to due to the lack of Wnt-3a gene expression.​

In short, my original assertion stands. Apes lack tails. That on rare occasions the mechanism for gene inhibition fails leading to a tail in some humans as a congenital defect, or that lesions or the effects of Spina Bifida occur leading to a "pseudo-tail" in a tiny minority of human infants, do not falsify my assertion.

See the linked article for sources.
 
The existence of soft tissue in dinosaurs doesn't mean that the remains are not tens of millions of years old anyway. If the dinosaur fell into a bog or a similar situation wouldn't the remains be like the bog people found in peat bogs?

Since the soft tissue if it exists is found inside a bone it might be possible for the tissue to exist.
 
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/dino_mummy

It all depends on what you mean by "soft tissue".

The above link goes to an article on a mummified dinosaur find. It includes skin, and perhaps internal organs. However, they're all stone--the dinosaur was mummified, and then turned to stone via replacement by sediment (at least the skin is, anyway). What you do NOT see in such finds is tissue that's actually still squishy.

I've heard various arguments for how the soft tissue in the T. rex bone got preserved. The jury is still out, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not fully comfortable saying that it really is dinosaur soft tissue yet, so discussing how it could be preserved seems premature.
 
dafydd said:
Thousands of years and not a shred of evidence for the existence of sky daddies. It will be a long so far, methinks.
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I should have been clearer. Perhaps our descendants will makeone. A being capable of creating universes, manipulating space, time, matter and energy at a whim.............
Or perhaps I should stop engaging with transhumanists.:o
 
Cainkane1 said:
The existence of soft tissue in dinosaurs doesn't mean that the remains are not tens of millions of years old anyway. If the dinosaur fell into a bog or a similar situation wouldn't the remains be like the bog people found in peat bogs?
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It would at first, but bogs don't halt decomposition or necessarily prevent fossilization. What they do is slow decomposition down (which can buy time for fossilization to have more of a chance to happen, but the bog people aren't fossilized). Bog people and other kinds of mummies a few centuries/millennia old are found not in pristine condition but partially decomposed, and (non-avian) dinosaurs in bogs would have been in there for tens of thousands of times that long by now. Even if that weren't plenty of time for complete decomposition at that same slow rate, a bog usually wouldn't even still be a bog for that long.

Animals' "soft tissues" (stuff that's not minerals, like bones/teeth/shells) are made of stuff that can be consumed and transported away by other organisms, or can be washed away or dissolved by water (especially water whose pH isn't 7), or can vaporize, or can be broken down into smaller simpler molecules that fit one or more of those descriptions... and that last category includes breaking down by themselves eventually if nothing else comes along to do it. So anything made from that stuff, left where any air or water or other organisms can get to it, will lose mass and eventually just not be there anymore.

Almost always, our evidence of soft tissues has to come from soft-tissue fossils, which are hard mineral objects in the shapes of organisms or parts of them, which got that way by replacement of the original atoms (mostly carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen) with mineral atoms. That doesn't usually happen; most soft-tissue objects in nature cease to exist without ever getting fossilized.

The only way for the original atoms of "organic matter" to still be there (in a fossil or other mineral object in the ground) millions of years later is if they relatively quickly end up in a sealed container where nothing gets in or out. Those aren't easy to find in nature, especially on short order. But if and when you DO find such a sealed container, and it contained soft tissue at the time it was sealed, then OF COURSE it's obviously still going to contain some kind of soft mushy organic matter; those trapped C/N/O/H atoms can't be anything else and couldn't go anywhere else. The only question is what arrangement the atoms will be in. If the bigger, more complex molecules, and the bigger-than-molecules structures such as membranes or fibers, have broken down into a mix of simpler fragmentary proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates (or less), then you can't really call it "tissue" anymore, much less "meat".
 
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Icebear,
As an observer of this thread with only a layman's understanding of evolution, I have to say that your strategy does not present your side of the argument very well at all. This is what most of this thread has looked like to me:

A. Icebear presents an argument against evolution

B. Several knowledgeable posters clearly explain the flaw(s) in that argument.

C. Icebear presents a new argument against evolution.

D. Goto step B and repeat.

You really need to address the counter arguments in some detail before moving onto a new argument otherwise it seems as if you are simply admitting defeat then trying something new in desperation.

Just my $0.02.
 
thenigotoffthebus said:
You really need to address the counter arguments in some detail before moving onto a new argument otherwise it seems as if you are simply admitting defeat pretending you never gave the first argument then trying something new in desperation.
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Pretty standard creationist tactic. When their argument is demolished, they bring up something else. When facing a new audience, bring up the first argument, in hope nobody will notice. Unfortunately, often nobody does notice.
 
Red Baron Farms said:
Exactly. In fact what literal creationists pretend is how we came into existence is complete woo. It isn't even how the writers intended their stories to be read or understood. You simply can't take a philosophical and/or metaphorical creation story and apply literal scientific standards to it.

Job 38:1-4
Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand......

Keep in mind even the book of Job is completely metaphorical. But it teaches the principle that even "the greatest man among all the people of the East." who "is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." and in fact so much so that "There is no one on earth like him", really has no idea about creation or the nature of God and it is shear arrogance for him to pretend he does.

Job 42:1-3
Then Job replied to the Lord:

“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

Now if the most righteous man on the earth has absolutely no understanding of the true nature of God or creation, how is it your fundamentalist preacher thousands of years and several changes of culture and translations of language later can claim he understands so surely that it must be taken literally? It is pure arrogance and exactly the opposite of the principles taught in the Bible.

Whether there actually was a historical Job or not I have no idea. What I do know is that the teachings of the book of Job indicate that NO ONE, not even the most righteous among us has the qualifications to make comments about the nature of God or creation that the creationists, literalists and/or creation scientists make based on Biblical teachings.

I also wonder why this is even in the science section of the forum? Your whole post reeks of a lame attempt to discredit science with completely flawed logic and propaganda techniques. It should be moved to the religion section where it belongs. This thread has zip zero nada to do with science.

Edit: Just to clarify, I was directing my comments to the OP, not Ladewig. I just happen to be one of those millions of Christians Ladewig refers to who thinks the whole fundamentalist Biblical creation science debate is bunk. It is neither Biblical nor scientific. Somehow they managed to get both wrong.
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This is interesting.

This thread has a wealth of data and linked resource.

I am engaging through email with a Christian who was involved with creating a pamphlet called 'The Fairytale' which ended up in my letter box.

Q: How do you know your God didn’t create through evolution?

A: (1) I know my God did not create through evolution because my God is the God of the bible. The God of the bible created the universe as stated in Genesis chapter 1 which is incompatible with evolution (each animal created to produce after it's own kind, not give rise to different kinds). A God that created through evolution is not the God of the bible and therefore it is not my god.

(2) There are some who try to make evolution fit with the bible, they are called Theistic Evolutionists. Now in order to reconcile evolution with the Bible, the account in Genesis 1-10 is said to be poetry or mythical.

(3) This is arbitrary, One might as well equally as arbitrarily take Darwin's 'Origin of the Species' as a poem or myth.

(4) It takes very little training in languages to identify literary genres; the natural reading of Genesis 1-10 reveals that it is historical narrative.

​

Me: (1) I consider the creation story a metaphor myself. At this time I have no desire to focus on that.
I would like to clarify. Your knowing is in relation to that story regarding your god and how he is said to have created the physical universe, correct?
You are not disputing that a conscious ‘something’ (which we could agree to refer to as ‘a god’) could have created through the device of evolution. You are saying that this conscious something is not ‘your god’ because you god is the ‘god of the bible’
Correct?

If so, what you refer to as ‘knowing’ is belief. You believe in the god of the bible and you know what the bible says re creation.

What you know the bible says, you believe that it is true.

Would you agree with this?

Q: Do you believe everything written in the bible? (yes or no will be fine for now)


(2) Or metaphor. Not to be taken literally. Like a parable. Metaphor is necessary in order to explain the unexplainable or exceptionally hard to explain.

(3) I find this quiet dismissive. Are you saying that people are dismissive of a story which can be seen as metaphor, and is but a page long, and this dismissive stance equates to the same thing as if a person would do this to Darwin’s comprehensive theory of evolution?
How do you justify your statement in light of the fact that one explanation is hardly a page long and the other is extremely involved and particular on details?

(4) Are you saying that while the story is only a few lines long, it is as involved and comprehensive as Darwin’s theory of evolution?
If so, can you expand on this, using that story?
 
thenigotoffthebus said:
Icebear,
As an observer of this thread with only a layman's understanding of evolution, I have to say that your strategy does not present your side of the argument very well at all. This is what most of this thread has looked like to me:

A. Icebear presents an argument against evolution

B. Several knowledgeable posters clearly explain the flaw(s) in that argument.

C. Icebear presents a new argument against evolution.

D. Goto step B and repeat.

You really need to address the counter arguments in some detail before moving onto a new argument otherwise it seems as if you are simply admitting defeat then trying something new in desperation.

Just my $0.02.
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What you say is true, but misses one important point I see that Icebear has not yet addressed. His initial contention is that nobody with any brains or creativity believes in evolution. He has stated flatly, in other words, that people who believe in evolution are devoid of brains: utterly, incorrigibly stupid. An accusation of that magnitude might be considered to need addressing before getting to details. It's quite an allegation, when you think about it.
 
Read through the entire thread. I am appalled. Icebear your "arguments" are so threadbare and pathetic. Now please exp0lain if Evolution is so stupid why so many Creationists accept the idea of Micro-Evolution. Which in my opinion gives the game away.
 
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