Evolutionists: How did legs evolve?

[The Barbarian]

I tend to think there's a key difference though. When Mrs. B starts talking insurance, your eyes glaze over mostly because it's rather dense, specialized material. But with Clete, his eyes glazed over because it was information he didn't want to begin with and wasn't at all open to ever considering.

Know what I mean?

Maybe so. But I'm thinking to one who is committed to a very different paradigm, it's exceedingly hard. We see many threads of evidence, all pointing in the same direction. I think he sees a bewildering mass of facts that don't make any sense to him.

At least I'm willing to give him the benefit of a doubt. He kept trying and until he got frustrated with that flood of material, he was willing to do the same thing I tried to do.

If we all did more of that, it would be a better TOL. I wish him well, and commend him for his efforts.

 

[Jonahdog]

Sure it is. Nothing else explains it.



Even given sixty million or six billion years, your fundamental proposition - life spontaneously from lifelessness - is absurd to the point of insane. It. Does. Not. Happen.

Ah but it did, and without the need for your particular deity or any deity. The absurdity and insanity is on your end.

 

[Ktoyou]

.

Yep. That looks like the pictures I seen when I was a small child. Back then they had pictures of fish crawling on the land and then some of the baby fish had these funny little legs. I thought is was more amusing than most children's stories. Imagine, if I never matured, I might have become a paleontologist.

 

[The Barbarian]

Yep. That looks like the pictures I seen when I was a small child.

The difference is, those pictures you saw (most often drawn by someone who didn't have any idea of what evolution is about) were just imagination. The progression you see here is real, and the transitionals are preserved in fossils in considerable detail.

Back then they had pictures of fish crawling on the land and then some of the baby fish had these funny little legs.

It was a problem for evolution, until it was discovered that legs evolved on fish long before they left the water.

I thought is was more amusing than most children's stories. Imagine, if I never matured, I might have become a paleontologist.

Normally, when one matures, facts become more important. But who knows? Some people actually think those cartoons you saw are what paleontologists think. Be careful not to fool yourself. And you're the easiest one for you to fool.

 

[Ktoyou]

What about those monkeys? Do they still live in paradise, and is paradise rather a state of mind where the concept of death in unrealised and unknown?

Paradise was what some called Eden, it is not Heaven.

Do some evolutionists envoy monkeys? Would they rather be monkeys? They sure do think we used to have a common ancestor monkey.

Where did tails come from?

 

[Ktoyou]

Barbarian observes:
The fossil record clearly shows gradual evolution of legs. But fish didn't climb up on land and grow legs. Legs on fish existed long before vertebrates were able to walk on land.




These things were found long after I was out of grad school. But the data and findings are available in the original journals if anyone cares to look.



And I read journal articles on the transitions from fish to tetrapods in my 40s and 50s. Life goes on.

Oh, you went to Grad school and studied this. Alright, so you believe it.
Devonian period, I see

 

[Silent Hunter]

There are many designs, and they are all suited to each organism. But this is not evidence for your designer.

Sure it is. Nothing else explains it.

Until something else does. What then happens to, "Goddidit!!!"? Does it go the way of the cause of thunder, lightning, and earthquakes?

And if you think it happened in six days, you're really going to have problems with evidence.

Even given sixty million or six billion years, your fundamental proposition - life spontaneously from lifelessness - is absurd to the point of insane. It. Does. Not. Happen.

... and your evidence for this bald assertion is your favorite holy book? Seriously?

 

[6days]

.... human wrists that are prone to repetitive motion injury due to the bones and nerves in a structure originally evolved for walking.

Our unique hand and wrist bones are powerful evidence of the Biblical Creator. Your argument is no different than the arguments evolutionists used to make about eye design... junk DNA...pseudogenes... useless appendix . ETC. The shoddy conclusions were based on a false belief system, and overturned by science.

 

[6days]

There are many designs, and they are all suited to each organism. But this is not evidence for your designer. And if you think it happened in six days, you're really going to have problems with evidence.

Of course good design is evidence for a good designer. Yes. God created in 6 days. It is evolutionists who try and explain evidence away with pseudoscientific explanations such as 'It must have evolved in the geological blink of an eye'. Science helps confirm the truth of God's Word.

 

[6days]

It's a pretty shabby mess, but it's what you'd expect from a species recently evolved from quadrupedalism.

Actually, Genesis tells us man was created distinct from animals, and that woman was created from mans rib. You can easily find secular articles that will marvel that man made inventions are not on the same level as the design in the human body. Good design... a God Designer

Miracle of the Human Body - Ambrose Video
www.ambrosevideo.com
The human body with its interconnected systems is the most advanced structure in the known universe. It is a marvel of biomechanical engineering. World renowned ...

 

[iouae]

Some therapsids are almost mammals. Others are more reptile-like. Over time, they lost cervical ribs, reduced the lower jaw configuration (thereby gaining 2 more bones in the middle ear), and so on.

We go from Permian's mammal like reptiles dominating, through the age of the reptiles, and we are now in the age of the mammals (Cainozoic).

At the end of the Cretaceous, dinosaurs are wiped out, and at the start of the Cainozoic, there are just a few small insectivorous mammals. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene ...

"While early mammals were small nocturnal animals that mostly ate soft plant material and small animals such as insects, the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs and the beginning of the Paleocene saw mammals growing bigger and occupying a wider variety of ecological niches. Ten million years after the death of the non-avian dinosaurs, the world was filled with rodent-like mammals, medium-sized mammals scavenging in forests, and large herbivorous and carnivorous mammals hunting other mammals, birds, and reptiles.

Fossil evidence from the Paleocene is scarce, and there is relatively little known about mammals of the time. Because of their small size (constant until late in the epoch) early mammal bones are not well preserved in the fossil record, and most of what we know comes from fossil teeth (a much tougher substance), and only a few skeletons.[7]"

I would love to get a complete list of mammals around just after the KT boundary. They were few. Now there are 5450 species of mammals. And there have been massive mammal extinctions 11000 years ago.

Since I already believe in a God and John 1:3, it is far easier for me to see God engineering the mammals, than random forces. If humans, who are chimps when it comes to genetic engineering, can make new species of bacteria, can clone insulin genes, can make organisms glow in the dark - and we have no clue to how the genetic code works - imagine what God can do. No, I don't have to imagine it, I can just watch David Attenborough on National Geographic.

But Barbarian, I have enjoyed chatting with you, and better understand why evolution sounds viable to folks.

 

[iouae]

What an odd position to take (you alluded to this earlier).

I had written "I suspect the fossil record is nearly complete, and that the ghost lineages are there due to God creating new species through geological time."

SUTG, it is assumed that, in time, all missing links (ghost lineages) will be found. This is almost like the evolutionist argument that "given enough time, anything can evolve, anywhere in the universe".

And I understand why you think we will just keep on finding more and more fossils.

But in some branches of palaeontology, fewer and fewer NEW and DIFFERENT fossils are found. This indicates, and can be statistically "proven" (can stats "prove" anything?) that we are reaching a limit to the hunt in this area. Will there never come a time folks admit defeat and just say "We cannot find ancestors to this fossil, it just seems to pop into existence in the geologic column?". If the answer is "No" then hope and faith spring eternal in the evolutionists breast. Because the majority of the fossil record is ghost lineages. Look at any phylogenetic diagram at the thin or dotted lines indicating theoretical connections to real animal fossils.

Then we resort to blaming bad preservation of fossils, or not looking enough in the right places.

Again I ask, can we not see that as the RATE of discovery of new and different fossils falls off, it indicates (to me at least) that we have a mature and nearly complete dataset.

 

[The Barbarian]

What about those monkeys? Do they still live in paradise, and is paradise rather a state of mind where the concept of death in unrealised and unknown?

Monkeys? I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Paradise was what some called Eden, it is not Heaven.

Monkeys, like other animals, are innocent. So they never had a fall. Whether or not that's paradise, God doesn't tell us.

Do some evolutionists envoy monkeys?

I wasn't aware that word could be used as a verb. What do you mean?

Would they rather be monkeys?

Why would you think that?

They sure do think we used to have a common ancestor monkey.

No, actually, they don't. It's those cartoons you used to read, not what the theory actually says.

Most people who think they hate science don't really know very much about it.

Where did tails come from?

The earliest chordates had tails. Almost all humans have them too, but they are vestigial, and likely to be completely functionless, since coccygeal agenesis normally has no symptoms whatever,and people typically never know they have it, unless it turns up on an x-ray.

 

[Ktoyou]

Monkeys? I don't have any idea what you're talking about.



Monkeys, like other animals, are innocent. So they never had a fall. Whether or not that's paradise, God doesn't tell us.

My dear Hjalma,
It is the reason so many of you evolutionists envy monkeys, as you said, they are innocent. The same reason most younger persons care more about protecting animals, rather than people. For the younger generations, humans lives don't matter; they rather save the lives of dogs and cats, and other innocent animals who do not bear their guilt.

It is called 'monkey envy' by thinkers like me. You despise what you cannot be, free of guilt, and you project your twisted idea of love on what you believe you are not, yet truly envy and admire.

Innocence is now the sacred state, your religion, your cult, yet even atheists cannot seem to convince themselves that they are innocent. You are doomed by your own imagination!

Maybe the flaw in your thinking and believing is a delusion, where people cannot be innocent because we talk and communicate abstractly with each-other. Maybe it is all an illusion!

Maybe, in reality, you are just a simple monkey with lots of guilt because you are able to imagine it. Perhaps you do not even imagine it; it may be only God who imagines you imaging whatever guilt you hold, yet you believe all animals are free of this terrible guilt, because you think they cannot imagine what is beyond their instinctual nature, and therefore are innocent of all imagined things, which keeps you in constant fear of life and death.

Dr. Vitus Werdegast

 

[The Barbarian]

My dear Hjalma,
It is the reason so many of you evolutionists envy monkeys, as you said, they are innocent.

Sounds unlikely. Never met a scientist who envied monkeys.

The same reason most younger persons care more about protecting animals, rather than people.

Maybe you know a different class of "younger persons" than I do. Pretty much everyone I meet these days is a younger person, so maybe that's it.

For the younger generations, humans lives don't matter;

I'd hate to live where you do. Sounds just awful.

they rather save the lives of dogs and cats, and other innocent animals who do not bear their guilt.

We shouldn't abuse animals; it's not just because God is offended by casual cruelty; it also corrodes one's soul.

It is called 'monkey envy' by thinkers like me.

I love to hear pop psychology. Kind of a Wal-mart version of New Agers.

You despise what you cannot be, free of guilt, and you project your twisted idea of love on what you believe you are not, yet truly envy and admire.

Sounds like projection, um? Who is this guy?

Innocence is now the sacred state, your religion, your cult, yet even atheists cannot seem to convince themselves that they are innocent. You are doomed by your own imagination!

We're all sinners. If he was a Christian, he'd understand the way out of that, poor fellah.

Maybe the flaw in your thinking and believing is a delusion, where people cannot be innocent because we talk and communicate abstractly with each-other. Maybe it is all an illusion!

Oh, post-modernism. I got it. A lot of post-modernists think evolution is just icky.

But what does any of that have to do with "envoying" monkeys?

 

[The Barbarian]

Oh, you went to Grad school and studied this. Alright, so you believe it.

Yeah, evidence is kind of an obsession with scientists. Drives creationists crazy, but there it is. There's a reason for it; it works. There's a reason science doesn't deal in beliefs without evidence; it doesn't work.

I realize that some creationists see evidence the way a vampire sees a crucifix, but that's not our problem.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
human wrists that are prone to repetitive motion injury due to the bones and nerves in a structure originally evolved for walking.

Our unique hand and wrist bones are powerful evidence of the Biblical Creator.

You think he routed the median nerve through a tunnel in the wrist so that it could be entrapped and compressed,causing a painful disability? To what purpose? It would have been easy to design a better way, more compatible with the reorientation of the wrist and hand in humans, but somehow, that didn't happen.

Your argument is no different than the arguments evolutionists used to make about eye design... junk DNA...pseudogenes... useless appendix . ETC.

You've been misled about these, too. For example, as an undergraduate, about half a century ago, I was reading journal articles about the functions of non-coding DNA. And you seem to have been convinced that "vestigial" means "useless." That's an error too. Darwin himself pointed out that vestigial organs often evolve a different function. And the loss of acuity in the vertebrate eye having a backwards facing retina is a fact. But since the retina in vertebrates is essentially part of the brain, that was necessary.

As usual, those who think they hate science don't even know what it says.

 

[iouae]

THE WAY GOD GENETICALLY ENGINEERS

The first way, when a very new species needs creating, is for God to take atoms (dust of the ground) and create the new species, complete by fiat. This is what God did with Adam.

Here is the composition of "dust of the ground" or atoms comprising humans.

The second way God genetically engineers is to take a creature and tweak the chromosomes a bit and make something similar but a little different. That is what God did to create Eve. He took Adam's rib/Y-chromosome, added a bit to Adams Y chromosome, and made it into an X chromosome. That little right leg of the X chromosome completes and complements the incomplete Y in man.

The third way God genetically engineers is to selectively breed. God chose Abraham, then there follows this fettish with opening and closing wombs, choosing wives for Abraham's descendants, and genetically engineering the Abrahamic descendants.

 

[Jonahdog]

THE WAY GOD GENETICALLY ENGINEERS

The first way, when a very new species needs creating, is for God to take atoms (dust of the ground) and create the new species, complete by fiat. This is what God did with Adam.

Here is the composition of "dust of the ground" or atoms comprising humans.

The second way God genetically engineers is to take a creature and tweak the chromosomes a bit and make something similar but a little different. That is what God did to create Eve. He took Adam's rib/Y-chromosome, added a bit to Adams Y chromosome, and made it into an X chromosome. That little right leg of the X chromosome completes and complements the incomplete Y in man.

The third way God genetically engineers is to selectively breed. God chose Abraham, then there follows this fettish with opening and closing wombs, choosing wives for Abraham's descendants, and genetically engineering the Abrahamic descendants.

Uh, no.

 

[Silent Hunter]

There are many designs, and they are all suited to each organism. But this is not evidence for your designer. And if you think it happened in six days, you're really going to have problems with evidence.

Of course good design is evidence for a good designer.

I think you're equivocating here. I'm certain "designs" as SUTG is using it means "functional structures".

Yes. God created in 6 days.

You don't know that and you certainly can't prove it.

It is evolutionists who try and explain evidence away with pseudoscientific explanations such as 'It must have evolved in the geological blink of an eye'. Science helps confirm the truth of God's Word.

Actually, no, it doesn't. Creationists don't do science. Their end point is, "I can't explain X", or, "X is too hard for me to believe/understand", or, "God's word (it's really man's word but creationists need a crutch to support their idiocy) contradicts a scientific explanation of X", therefore, "Goddidit!!!!!!!"