Creationist Reply…challenging!

[jasonparker]

A creationist book…like a reply file to evolutionists… to tell the truth a qualified one, what do you think about the "True Natural History - II" section? http://www.harunyahya.com/refuted1.php

[IrishEyes]

jasonparker,

Welcome to our forums!! It's great to see new poeple posting here, and we always welcome new members and their ideas. However, I feel it best to inform you that your posts need to abide by our FAQ. Please take note, and feel free to edit your post as you see fit:

www.hypography.com/forums/faq.cfm

How should I behave?
3. Do not post links to other sites as proof of your claims without commenting what the relevant sites say and why they are important to the current discussion.

Also, also on the FAQ page, there is a list of ways to avoid common argument fallacies. Please take the time to read over the list and familiarize yourself with this information. It will prove invaluable to you in these forums, trust me!

Again, WELCOME! I look forward to reading more from you in the near future!!

[Uncle Martin]

JasonP,
A very interesting,.... and long article. I didn't get to read all of it yet, but will.

I was quite interested in the part about the unique avian lung. This is something I was unaware of. I think this could be evidence that refutes the assumed common ancestry of birds and reptiles. I don't however see how it refutes evolution. If birds cannot be linked to reptiles, we must keep looking for their true origin rather than discount evolution as a whole.

The puzzle is complex,... and over the course of hundreds of millions of years it should not be surprising that some of the pieces have been lost. Sadly, in some cases, irretrievably so. The author of the article takes alot of liberties in deciding what is and is not an evolutionary advantage, this caused me to reconsider the credibility his eloquent and seemingly well researched writing first implies.

Modern day flightless birds use thier (partial)wings quite effectively to run much faster than if they had no wings at all. Perhaps in a million years ostriches will be adept flyers,...... just something to think about.

[Freethinker]

First, there is a very good chance that this is a one trick pony. Another hit and run creationist that thinks they have the magic bullet that kills those horrible baby eating Atheists that rule the world of facts and science.

there is a claim made on this home page which exposes the fallacious intent of this effort.

"they believe evolution to be a theory supported by the observational findings of science,

Actually, not only is Evolution SUPPORTED by "the observational findings of science", Evolution is the OUTCOME of those observations. They actually ahve it exactly backwards. This shows how little udnerstanding they ahve about the whole concept of Science and Scientific methodology.

FACTUAL OBSERVATIONS of nature DEVELOPED the Theory of Evolution. Evolution is the END RESULT of those observations, not the motivation to MAKE the observations.

while creation is thought to be a belief based on faith.

Which is exactly what it IS. Creation is not in any sense SCIENCE. Creation is based on not only non-observable claims (non-science), but has no predictive value what so ever. Scientific Theories only have value as predictive elements. Biology is a PREDICTIVE science. It is based on common genetic evolution of all existing life on earth and predictive results based on these observationally developed processes. Creationism however is based on the concept of some outside agent intentionally making arbitrary changes to nature which violate any observable causality relationships.

There are also any number of Creation myths to compete with each other. Which one of these hundreds, perhaps thousands, are being promoted as the alternative here? And based on what?

FAITH!

As a matter of fact, however, scientific findings do not support the theory of evolution.

Outright lie. As shown above, it is not even a matter of Evolution being SUPPORTED by "scientific findings", it is that "scientific findings" developed Evolution as the most accurate explanation for them. In the old chicken/ egg question, OBSERVATION came first with EVOLUTION being the name chosen for the Theory that results from those observations.

Findings from the last two decades in particular openly contradict the basic assumptions of this theory. Many branches of science, such as paleontology, biochemistry, population genetics, comparative anatomy and biophysics, indicate that natural processes and coincidental effects cannot explain life, as the theory of evolution proposes."

And here we get the typical exposure of those that lack factual understanding of what Evolution IS.

All together now!

Evolution does not even attempt to "explain life". Abiogenesis does.

Evolution is the name of the process, based on observation, that explains the DIVERSITY of life on earth as we know it .today.

[Freethinker]

We find that this author, Adnan Oktar, has no credentials in the fields he claims to explore. That in fact his entire very extensive publishing career is specifically aimed at the "struggle against infidelity". (From the site's page on the Author). Thus an intent to discredit science at all costs, including sacrifice of truth. His efforts go so far as to include publishing a book on Holocaust-denying called "The Holocaust Hoax" (In the Turkish language only)

As we have seen the very premise behind the book is so flawed as to make information contained highly suspect. But's let's look into the book. Starting at the beginning.

The most thoroughly considered view of evolution was expressed by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his Zoological Philosophy (1809). Lamarck thought that all living things were endowed with a vital force that drove them to evolve toward greater complexity. He also thought that organisms could pass on to their offspring traits acquired during their lifetimes...
This evolutionary model of Lamarck's was invalidated by the discovery of the laws of genetic inheritance. In the middle of the twentieth century, the discovery of the structure of DNA revealed that the nuclei of the cells of living organisms possess very special genetic information, and that this information could not be altered by "acquired traits."...
However, the evolutionary theory formulated by another natural scientist who <u>lived</u> a couple of generations after Lamarck proved to be more influential. This natural scientist was Charles Robert Darwin, and the theory he formulated is known as "Darwinism."

This is the very first part of the book. And he can't even get this simple history right.

Yes he is correct about Lamark's views and that Lamarkian Evolution doesn't work. But I've posted that numerous times on another thread on this site.

But he asserts that Lamarkian Evolution was "invalidated by the discovery of the laws of genetic inheritance. In the middle of the twentieth century,".

Actually Darwin rejected Lamarkian Evolution and that is what Darwinian Evolution is based on.

Further we are told that Darwin <u>lived</u> "a couple of generations after Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)

Charles Darwin (1809 -1882)

While Darwin may have been BORN a generation after Lamark, they LIVED and WORKED as CONTEMPORARIES

Thus we can not get past even the 1st paragraph of the book without finding multiple factual errors. This does not bode well for this person as any kind of valid source.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: Uncle Martin
I was quite interested in the part about the unique avian lung. This is something I was unaware of.

What the author is doing here Unc, is to parrot the lies of other IDers'. It is done thru the twisting of facts. The invention of connections that don't exist.

This specific claim has been addressed and exposed many times. But since most people aren't in a position to have researched all of the garbage IDer's spew, they keep getting away with it. It SOUNDS credible until it is looked at factually. e.g this is how it is handled at talk origins

"Of course there is no "transitional" between a reptile and avian lung, for two reasons.

1. Any modern reptile or bird evolved, not one from another, but from a common ancestor. That common ancestor will not be entirely the same in its lung structure as either reptiles or birds.

2. There is no such thing as "the" reptile lung or "the" bird lung. It's not like they have a standard part that gets ordered from the factory. Each species has it's own version of a lung, and there will be differences.

Then you ask how a half-way lung could function. The answer of course is that it functioned very well in the animal that had it, even if it would not function well in either a bird or lizard.

And Michael Behe's IR thesis is mistaken. One way that functions can be added to irreducibly complex systems (like genetic-determined biochemical pathways) is by duplicating the genes so you have a "spare" copy to mutate and evolve, so it can replace the older IR system if necessary"

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/feedback/nov99.html


So we find one of the very basic lies used by Creationist ID/ IRers is to ignore what Evolution actually IS. It is about common ancestry. Just as we hear them continually rag about how humans did not evolve from apes. We KNOW that. NO ONE but them CLAIMS it. What evolution shows is NOT that we came from apes, but that there is common ancestry.

This is a common ploy used in an attempt to use psudeo-science to sound scientific.

[TINNY]

1. Any modern reptile or bird evolved, not one from another, but from a common ancestor. That common ancestor will not be entirely the same in its lung structure as either reptiles or birds.

Is there any fossil evidence?

[Tormod]

Here is one source:

the Dinosaur Encyclopaedia: Birds and Dinosaurs
http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/dinos/de_4/5c60b93.htm

Many of the difficulties in deciding the bird/dinosaur problem stemmed in part from the lack of skeletons of early birds. However, an explosion in the discovery of such skeletons in the 1990’s has produced a large number of early birds and “transitional” forms that have greatly strengthened the argument that birds are descended from dinosaurs.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: Tormod

This is a big problem in general with our understanding of speciation based transitions from common ancestors and Evoltuion. There have not been that many digs. We are talking about a science about 150 years old. That only a handful of digs even get funded. That early digs had little of the documentation, level of scientific rigor used in modern digs. Mapping out areas in specific grids. Documentation of specific locations of bones relative to each other. Exploration and digs in many areas are restricted by geo-political issues from unsafe parts of the world to inablity to stop the Capitalistic Machine that wants big buildings built under time frames that don't allow for scientific investigations of the sites archeology.

I just read (wish I could remember where!) about the death of a distinquished scientist and his massive qty of fossile and digs which only he knew which and how most of it was documented. A great resource if we could just have the key to all of it, which died with him.

The bigger problem for public knowledge though is how Creationists, such as the author suggested here, don't bother to keep up with, or intentionally ignore, newer findings. They keep pushing old info as if it is all that exists. Along with their contiual yelling for "one more". That no matter how many transitional fossile are found, no matter how much we tighten the gaps, they want "one more".

[TeleMad]

Tinny:

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1. Any modern reptile or bird evolved, not one from another, but from a common ancestor. That common ancestor will not be entirely the same in its lung structure as either reptiles or birds.
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Is there any fossil evidence?

I haven't looked into this topic for many years, but here are some old quotes (back from when I was a hard-core antievolutionist) I still have (the 'intro' is mine). The quotes from Science are about a find that is only instance I know of of lungs (soft tissue) being preserved in a dinosaur well enough to examine.

****************************************

1) The lung of the avian (bird) respiratory system is unique – no other extant animal has its one-way flow-through design, in which the flow of air during both inspiration and expiration is in the same direction. Theropod dinosaurs’ respiratory systems (and many other of their physiological structures, such as particular muscles, trachea, colon, etc.)are closely related to those of modern-day crocodiles, not those of modern-day birds.

“In modern crocodiles this muscle runs from the pubis to the liver and helps move the liver back
and forth like a piston, causing the lungs to expand and contract. An airtight layer of tissue, the
diaphragm, separates liver and lungs. Finding this arrangement, called a hepatic-piston
diaphragm, in the theropod dinosaurs rules out the possibility that they breathed with a
sophisticated birdlike lung…” (Bernice Wuethrich, Stunning Fossil Shows Breath of a Dinosaur,
Science, v283, Number 5401, January 22 1999, p468)

“Together, these [numerous anatomical and physiological] features are consistent with Scipionyx
having used a hepatic piston, diaphragm-assisted breathing (similar to that which occurs in extant
crocodilians) … These attributes are inconsistent with Scipionyx having had an avian-style, lung
air sac system. Moreover, data indicative of diaphragm breathing in such disparate forms as
Sinosauropteryx and Scipionyx reinforce the hypothesis that diaphragm-assisted lung ventilation
was widespread in theropod dinosaurs.” (John A. Ruben, Cristiano Dal Sasso, et al., Pulmonary
Function and Metabolic Physiology of Theropod Dinosaurs, Science, v283, Number 5401,
January 22 1999, p515-516)

“Abdominal air sacs are of fundamental importance to the function of both neo- and paleopulmo
portions of the lung in extant birds. Their likely absence in Scipionyx is an indication that an
avian [bird] style, flow-through, air sac lung was not present in this theropod.” (John A. Ruben,
Cristiano Dal Sasso, et al., Pulmonary Function and Metabolic Physiology of Theropod
Dinosaurs, Science, v283, Number 5401, January 22 1999, p514)

“One reason this is significant is that, as Ruben argues, “a transition from a crocodilian to a bird
lung would be impossible, because the transitional animal would have a life-threatening hernia or
hole in it’s diaphragm””. (Ashly L. Camp, On the Alleged Dinosaurian Ancestry of Birds,
Copyright October 10 1998, http://home.sprynet.com/trueorigin/birdevo.htm)

“Just how such an utterly different respiratory system could have evolved gradually from the
standard vertebrate design [to that of birds’] is fantastically difficult to envisage, especially
bearing in mind that the maintenance of respiratory function is absolutely vital to the life of an
organism to the extent that the slightest malfunction leads to death within minutes" (Michael
Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, Adler & Adler, Bethesda Maryland, p208)