And as you learned, Dawinism was the direct parent of social Darwinism, one of the greatest evils of modern times.
In the sense that Christianity was the direct parent of Jim Jones and his cult. Just because someone borrows the name, that doesn't mean there's any connection. You think the People's Republic of China is run by the people of China? As you learned, Darwin assailed the ideas promoted by "social Darwinists."
There are quite a number of scholarly articles on the subject and you may like to disabuse yourself of the rose-coloured glasses you habitually wear when discussing Darwin and evolution by googling some of them.
But you can't find any at the moment? How unfortunate.
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 a little more than charlataniism, barbarian.
No, I believe he was quite sincere in this.
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.
You learned somewhat earlier, that Huxley routed Owen, using his own anatomical data, taking the same position as Linnaeus. Would you like to see that, again?
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..
As you see, he was clearly wrong about Linnaeus, who concluded that there were no essential differences between humans and other apes.
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.
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?
As I said below, there are oddities
To a creationist, it's an insoluble problem. But it becomes perfectly understandable when modern science takes a look at it.
I say 'hopeless' because the vast, vast majority of the living world is so easily classsified into 'types' that Linnaeus' system is still used today - even to name those pathetic few you have dredged up.
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.
QUOTE]No one would say that a bird (which conforms to the archetypal bird) was a horse (which belongs to its own archetypal group).[/quote]
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.[/quote]
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.
Can't do it? If you can't even do this, what makes you think you can say anything about the theory?
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?
and the boundaries between groups far too powerfully delineated for them to be crossed or confused.
Barbarian chuckles:
Well, let's see what you can do with those, and then we can move on to more difficult ones.
So bring forth their taxonomies, and I'll tell you.
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.
There may be the odd creature here and there (such as the platypus) that presents some difficulty to the typologist, but they are few and far between, and present just as many difficulties to the evolutionist who cannot possibly account for the origin of such a creature.
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.
Utter tripe.
Archaeopteryx is no bird ancestor.
Show us your evidence for that. You're telling us a creature with dinosaur features, with feathers and wings that could fly, isn't a bird?
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. The fossil bird discovered by Chatterjee is alleged to be about 225 million years old, or 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx.
Ah, the "if you're alive, your uncle has to be dead" argument. It's still hooey.
An age of 225 million years is supposed to correspond with the beginning of the so-called Triassic Period, the first geological period of the Mesozoic Era, the supposed era of the dinosaurs.
Let's take a look...
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...Chatterjee claims that the humerus of Protoavis is "remarkably avian",[10]:53 but as in all matters with the fossils referred to this taxon, accurate identification of the elaborate trochanters, ridges, etc., attributed to the humerus by Chatterjee is impossible at this time. Interestingly, the expanded distal condyles, which appear to be present in the humerus of Protoavis and enlarged deltopectoral crest (a ridge for the attachment of chest and shoulder muscles), are congruent with the morphology of ceratosaur humeri, as is the apparent presence of a distal brachial depression.[16]
The femur of Protoavis is astonishingly like that of a ceratosaur. The proximal femur displays a trochanteric shelf caudal to the lesser and greater trochanters, a feature synapomorphic of Ceratosauria[16][17] Further similarities between the proximal humerus of Protoavis and that of ceratosaurs are found in the shared presence of an enlarged obturator ridge, whose morphology in Protoavis is again, uncannily like that observed in robust ceratosaurs, e.g., Syntarsus.[17] The resemblance between the femur of Protoavis and that of a ceratosaur becomes ever more pronounced at the distal end of the bone. Both share a crista tibiofibularis groove, a synapomorphy of ceratosaurs separating the medial and lateral condyles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoavis
The data supporting these is well-referenced by the article. So two things become apparent:
1. There's considerable question as to whether this is a bird or not (or even whether or not these bones are all from the same animal)
2. If so, it greatly increase the evidence for birds evolving from dinosaurs, since
Protoavis has even more dinosauran characteristics than
Archaeopteryx.
Now, what would evolutionists expect of a bird as old as the oldest dinosaurs—75 million years older than Archaeopteryx? Why, of course, they would expect this bird to be very reptile-like, much closer to its reptilian ancestor than Archaeopteryx.
Bingo. And it is. A lot more. Archie has more dinosaur characteristics than avian ones, but Chatterjee's specimen looks more like a feathered dinosaur than a bird.
Barbarian observes:
Let's test that assumption. Name me two major groups said to be evolutionarily connected, and I'll see if I can find an intermediate.
We've done this before, and you lost on each occasion.
We'll use the bats, AND ANYTHING ELSE YOU CARE TO NOMINATE.
Couldn't think of any? Not surprising. I've never had a creationist come up with anything.
I personally can't find any claims that they have ancestors, - so that proves beyond doubt that they were created, rather than evolved.
Rarely does one see so bluntly the creationist assumption "if we don't know, then it means our story is right."
Whether or not the system gave rise to racism
Typology is the father of modern racism, but it's incidental to the fact that it's clearly wrong.
Barbarian observes:
Not to the Jews of Europe, it wasn't.
Social Darwinism produced that evil
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.
Darwinism gave rise to some of the worst excesses of modern times - social Darwinism
Barbarian chuckles:
In the sense that Christianity gave rise to Jim Jones. As you learned some time ago, Darwin labeled the idea of neglecting the weak among humans to be an "overwhelming evil."
Christianity did not give rise to Jones.
Nor did Darwin give rise to social Darwinism. Just because people like Jones and racists borrow a name, it doesn't mean they actually follow the ideas.
Barbarian observes:
Typology opposes the notion of common descent, and provided a faux-scientific gloss to racism and Nazism.
You've got that wrong on 2 counts at least.
Let's see...
There is no such thing as common descent.
That's what Agassiz said about whites and blacks. But he was wrong. You are, too.
Show me a fossil of the common ancestor, and I'll believe you.
I offered to show you a transitional between any two major groups that are connected evolutionarily, and you declined to do it. And you've already seen in (for example, termites) that the transitional forms are still living.
Second, it was social Darwinism that gave rise to these things.
And Jim Jones gave rise to mass murder. But Darwin didn't produce social Darwinism, and Christianity didn't produce Jim Jones.
Simple lesson. Learn from it.
