(Barbarian challenges Async to name any two major groups, said to be evolutionarily connected; Barbarian offers to seek an intermediate)
(Async declines to do so)
Barbarian sympathizes:
But you can't find any at the moment? How unfortunate.
You have been challenged to find ANY alleged ancestor of the bats.
So that's your concession that you can't find even one case of two major group without an intermediate? You couldn't do it so you came up with a challenge for me instead.
Start a new thread on bats, and we'll deal with that there. Now that you've conceded that you can't find two major groups, said to be evolutionarily connected, and lacking a transitional, we'll move on.
Barbarian observes:
Linnaeus' findings contradicted the notion of "types."
It matters little to me what names we use; but I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character, one that is according to generally accepted principles of classification, by which to distinguish between man and ape ... I myself most assuredly know of none. I wish somebody would indicate one to me. But, if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so.
Carolus Linnaeus
This is an astonshing exhibition from a man who ought to have known better. On this very forum I have listed very many major differences between man and ape, and to which you have not been able to reply, far less deny.
As you learned Huxley routed Owen in a debate, in which he showed him that there was no essential difference in anatomy between humans and other apes. You abandoned the thread in which you claimed all those differences after I showed you they weren't essential differences at all.
But I am not accusing Linnaeus of charlatanism. I am accusing you.
I mean this to help you. It would be a lot better for you, if you did fewer accusations, and found more evidence to support your beliefs.
To say that a man who was an out and out typologist was NOT a typologist, is a disgraceful exhibition of your manner of handling inconvenient facts.
If you believe that a man who says there are no essential differences between man and ape is a typologist, then I'd have to conclude that you don't know what the word means.
The man who more than any other was responsible for the modern taxonomic system of classifying the living world into types, meaning species, genera and higher groups, is now a supporter of your foolish logic.
He knew more about anatomy than you, it seems.
I am at this moment interested in your falsification of Linnaeus' position: you are falsifying it in the interests of supporting your somewhat shaky position.
You're denying Linnaeus said it?
As Denton says (p99, Evolution, A Theory is Crisis)
Nearly all the great biologists and naturalists of the late 18th century and early 19th century, who founded the modern disciplines of comparative anatomy, taxonomy and palaeontology adhered strictly to a discontinuous typological model of nature..
Barbarian observes:
As you see, he was clearly wrong about Linnaeus, who concluded that there were no essential differences between humans and other apes.
Linnaeus had a point. Huxley drove that point home, and of course, you bailed out of that thread when I showed you the evidence.
Whether he thought there were no essential differences simply means that he lumped them together under one archetype. It does not mean that he wasn't a typologist.
Again, if you think a man who sees no essential differences between a man and other apes is a typologist, you surely don't know what the word means.
Barbarian observes:
When the data started accumulating, one typologist after another became a Darwist. Agassiz was the lone holdout by 1900, and all of his students became Darwinists. As you also learned, Agassiz applied "typology" to humans. Typology says blacks and white do not have a common ancestor.
No, it's false. All humans have a common ancestor. All living things on Earth have a common ancestor. That's why Linnaeus' family tree of life was possible.
But being a typologist, Agassiz argued that whites and blacks were not related to each other:
Agassiz was specifically a believer and advocate in polygenism, that races came from separate origins (specifically separate creations), were endowed with unequal attributes, and could be classified into specific climatic zones, in the same way he felt other animals and plants could be classified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz
- or are you fabricating again?
By now, you should be cautious enough to know that when I tell you something, I can back it up.
Barbarian chuckles:
So, when we have the platypus which has fur like a mammal, is partially warm-blooded, has the mammalian jawbone and ear, but has a cloaca like a reptile, a muzzle like a therapsid, the reptilian bones in the shoulder, and lays reptilian eggs, that seems to be a bit between "types", doesn't it? There are a lot more like that. Would you like to see more?
Account for the evolution of the platypus.
Random mutation and natural selection. There are fossil platypuses that are larger and more like generalized marsupials than the highly specialized ones today. For example, they had typical marsupial teeth, not a toothless muzzle like those today.
As I said below, there are oddities
Barbarian chuckles:
To a creationist, it's an insoluble problem. But it becomes perfectly understandable when modern science takes a look at it.
To a creationist? No, God can do exactly as He wishes
You say that but when He does, you don't like it.
Barbarian observes:
You've missed his point. He made a family tree for living things. Yes, more of a bush than a tree, but still, he turns out to have been pretty good at it. DNA analyses and comparisons of conserved molecules shows that common descent is indeed very largely the way he found it to be.
I have not missed his point.
Right over your head. Sorry.
No one would say that a bird (which conforms to the archetypal bird) was a horse (which belongs to its own archetypal group).
Barbarian chuckles:
Amazing that anyone with the skill to use a keyboard, would think that evolutionary theory is about such things.
Barbarian suggests:
Speaking of which, tell me if Archaeopteryx is a bird or a dinosaur, and how you decided.
Async declines:
In order to answer your question about these specific creatures, bring forth their full classifications, down to species level, and I will tell you what the genuine taxonomists have said.
No surprise there. If you can't even do this, what makes you think you can say anything about the theory?
Gould and Eldredge exclude Archaeopteryx as a transitional form, calling it a strange mosaic which doesn't count as a transitional form
S.G. Gould and Niles Eldredge, Poleobiology, V. 3, p. 147 (1977).
You've been suckered again, I'm afraid...
"At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the "official" position of most Western evolutionists. Smooth intermediates between Bauplane are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like Archaeopteryx do not count).
Stephen Gould
He was saying that the idea of a smooth gradualism in evolution is not a realistic notion. Notice that he does
not say that Archaeopteryx is not a transitional. He says it's a mosaic of some advanced and some primitive characteristics. (which is what a transitional is) You've been hoodwinked again.
Why's that, do you think?
You're easy for anyone who will tell you what you want to believe.
Barbarian offers another challenge:
So tell me if Diarthrognathus is a reptile or a mammal, and how you decided. That should be easy. Mammals have one kind of jaw joint, and reptiles have a different one. So which is Diarthrognathus?
(declines again)
No surprise there. He says if I'll classify it for him, he'll classify it for me.
That's what I'm asking you to do. Since you seem unable to do that, we can only conclude that your argument is specious.
Barbarian observes:
As you just learned, it's a rather convincing intermediate between reptiles and mammals. A rather good mix of reptile and mammal. It's technically a mammal, because it has only the dentary in the lower jaw, but laying reptilian eggs, having reptilian shoulders and having a single cloaca instead of the mammalian urogenital structure puts it nicely in as a transitional.
All facts. Sorry about that.
It has characteristics of a mammal, a reptile, and a bird.
Nope. No birdlike traits.
Since it appeared very recently,
There were primitive platypuses in the fossil record millions of years ago.
i
t cannot be an ancestor of any of them, and still it is till alive, that proves that it is not a transitional either.
Ah, the "if you're alive, your uncle must be dead" argument. Still hooey.
Archaeopteryx is no bird ancestor.
It's merely a transitional. Very close to the line that gave rise to modern birds, but it would be astonishingly lucky if we were to find the very specimen.
The discovery of the two fossil birds in the Dockum Formation near Post, Texas, by Chatterjee, has dealt a final fateful blow to Archaeopteryx as a transitional form between reptiles and birds.
See above. Your guy just doesn't know what "transitional" means. Also, Chatterjee's "bird" is no longer considered a bird and might not even be one animal, but several:
However, this description of Protoavis assumes that Protoavis has been correctly interpreted as a bird. Almost all palaeontologists doubt that Protoavis is a bird, or that all remains assigned to it even come from a single species, because of the circumstances of its discovery and unconvincing avian synapomorphies in its fragmentary material. When they were found at the Tecovas and Bull Canyon Formations in the Texas panhandle in 1984, in a sedimentary strata of a Triassic river delta, the fossils were a jumbled cache of disarticulated bones that may reflect an incident of mass mortality following a flash flood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoavis
(again Async does the "if you're alive, your uncle must be dead" story)
Hooey, actually. It's quite normal for a transitional form to live on long after a new species has diverged from the line. Just as it's possible for you to be, and your uncle still alive.
But in recent years, doubts have arisen as older fossils with similar bird-like features such as feathers and wishbones and three fingered hands were discovered.
These were found in dinosaurs before birds evolved.
Sooner or later, there are going to be even earlier birds, genuine birds found - and then where will you be? Right up to your ears in it, heh heh heh! Just you wait, Henry Higgins!
As you learned, a transitional can live on as a species long after another has split off from the group. Surprise.
Did you know that Fred Hoyle, among others, thinks that Arch. is a fake - a convenient fake?
Yep. He thought the feathers were somehow attached. The demonstration of feather imprints in the counterslab put an end to that speculation.
We'll use the bats, AND ANYTHING ELSE YOU CARE TO NOMINATE.
Since you can't find any two major groups said to be evolutionarily connected, that doesn't have a transitional, we'll go to your bats. Start a new thread and I'll show you the evidence for that. But doesn't the fact that you can't find even one case without a transitional give you pause? More importantly, you can't find a transitional anywhere there shouldn't be one.
I personally can't find any claims that they have ancestors, - so that proves beyond doubt that they were created, rather than evolved.
Barbarian observes:
Rarely does one see so bluntly the creationist assumption "if we don't know, then it means our story is right."
Ignorance, from one who claims to believe in the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, is a very sad and damaging admission.
No science is without problems to solve. Start your thread on bats and I'll show you what evidence exists.
Only to have the boat sunk by innumerable torpedoes by innumerable examples, such as are to be found in the Cambrian Explosion of a zillion different NEW fossils, which are totally unconnected with anything that 'went before'!
As you learned earlier, the Cambrian was preceded by a large number of fossils of things like primitive trilobites and other invertebrates. Would you like me to show you those, again?
Barbarian observes:
Typology is the father of modern racism, but it's incidental to the fact that it's clearly wrong.
It's wrong. All humans, for example, have a common ancestor.
Social Darwinism produced that evil
Barbarian chuckles:
Nope. Typology. The Nazis even borrowed the terminology. So we had a "Nordic type" and a "Jewish type" and a "Negro type" and so on. Darwinians, as you learned early, had thoroughly discredited this kind of thinking.
They're not in the same league of evil.
True. Agassiz just didn't like blacks and wanted to avoid them. The Nazis borrowed his ideology for much worse things.
If that is the case, then why wasn't it called Social Agassizim, and not Social Darwinism?
I bet you think the German Democratic Republic was a democracy, too. Don't be so willing to believe names people use to hide their motives.
There is no such thing as common descent.
That's what Agassiz said about whites and blacks.. But all humans have a common ancestor. And as Linnaeus and DNA analysis and a huge number of transitionals show you, all life on earth has a common ancestor.
You're willing to accept typology, until it gets to humans, and then you want to do something else. That alone should be a revelation for you.
