Is evolution a fact?

[SpecialFrog]

Ok the blame me.l whatever have a ball.

You have effectively destroyed the case again. You make the mutational leaps too great and mathematically impossible by claiming sister groups and not direct descendents

Care to share some of this mathematics with us that shows it is impossible?

 

[Rumraket]

the mutational leap is too great...

Prove this claim. With facts.

 

[Rumraket]

IMathematically impossible actually...

Please show that math.

 

[Rumraket]

I didn't answer your question because I agree I did not understand it properly. I didn't understand it properly because what you are claiming is making the mutational leap too great and therefore unattainable... You are effective arguing that if the descendants are not linear that evolution becomes impossible to proceed.

That statement is completely nonsensical.

 

[Isotelus]

If you then take out the direct lineage then you make the mutational leap far greater.. Mathematically impossible actually... So to then argue they are simply brothers/ sister cousins. Whatever.. Is effectively destroying your case. So if you wish to argue not direct decedent it is case destroyed. Believe it or not.

Mutational leap is not an actual thing, even though I do know what you're attempting to say. Considering we as individuals each have hundreds of mutations in our DNA alone, your claim is tenuous at best. Kindly follow your own advice and give us the evidence. How many generations of populations are you thinking stand between a common ancestor and two sister groups?

I will say that if it was mathematically impossible, where do you think those charts are coming from? They're not made by a bunch of scientists throwing pictures of fossils on a board. It's the result of a rigorous statistical analyses coming up with millions of trees and rerunning more tests to find a single tree that most closely represents the relationships of the groups in question.

 

[Rumraket]

also upon reviewing the chart it is direct ancestory.. If you wish to debate that I urge you to look up a human family tree.. How the lines go from father to father.. Or mother to mother... To claim sister groups is misrepresenting your own evidence. So again to claim I don't understand now that I re looked at it is laughable.

It is drawn as direct ancestory not "sister groups" so to claim "sister groups" is misrepresenting th echart dragan glas provided.

So I charge you with misrepresenting the evidence.

That is a straight up silly charge.

IT is not only not misleading, it isn't even neutral. It is straight up the most likely and honest presentation possible. It is simply unlikely for them to be direct descendants, because basically any species will almost always have many contemporary sister species that are highly similar.

On those grounds it is therefore much more likely that they are in fact cousins, instead of related through a straight line of descent.

Think about it. Suppose a million year from now, future archeologists dig up two human fossils from different parts of the globe. What is the chance one is going to be the child of the other? (You can do this rather simple math I take it, right?)

 

[Rumraket]

http://www.icr.org/article/mathematical-impossibility-evolution/

Can you please quote the relevant parts here and explain what you are responding to? Nobody here has any interest in sitting here engaging in a discussion with a link.

 

[Rumraket]

Again so the chart is.l if you wish to misrepresent it.. It's your evidence not mine. Don't expect me to believe that if you are forced to misrepresent it. I don't care what sort of ridiculous waters this gets you in.. I'm not the evolutionist.. You are.

Berhard, can I ask you on the most sincere terms possible, to go back and try to start over with the chart and the subsequent posts we have given you?

You are operating under a rather simple understanding and I'm confident you can sort it out yourself if you just spend 2 minutes re-reading the posts relevant to the chart again. The information given to you should be enough for you to see what the chart represents and why it is not being misrepresented or anything. I don't believe you're stupid at all or anything, you are just speed posting or something. I get that it can be frustrating having to argue with multiple people and many new posts keep propping up.

But, take 10 minutes maybe, to just sit back and read the posts to make sure you understand. Nobody's trying to "get" you and we aren't really busy here.

 

[Rumraket]

Dragan glas chart clearly shows direct ancestral lines.

No it doesn't Bernhard. It simply doesn't.

Here the charts are again: Notice in this one, each individual species sits on it's own sister branch. No species is placed as the direct ancestor of another.

Same for this one: No direct line of descent between the branch-points. They have to pass through a common ancestor node every time before going back out along a branch again.

 

[SpecialFrog]

It is worse because the chart claims every time there was an effective mutation/change then the changed animal was not responsible for passing on its changed genetics... It clearly shows every transitional animal to not be responsible for passing down the change... So the very transitional fossil you want, you claim is an ancestor has effectively been put out...

It says no such thing. No one is claiming that the mutations originated in the species in the chart. They are simply closer to the origin of those characteristics.

 

[SpecialFrog]

Yes it does.. Because every transitional is effectively a question mark.. If you follow the direct line.. No transitional fossils, therefore no evidence, the chart is self debunking,

Except that is not what "transitional fossil" means as has been explained multiple times.

Do you agree that the brother of your ancestor still tells us about your genetic ancestry?

 

[Isotelus]

Ok I apologize I am wrong. Just seen it and you are correct. Sorry to ISO.. You did not misrepresent chart. Shit. Sorry

Thank you.

It is worse because the chart claims every time there was an effective mutation/change then the changed animal was not responsible for passing on its changed genetics... It clearly shows every transitional animal to not be responsible for passing down the change... So the very transitional fossil you want, you claim is an ancestor has effectively been put out...

You can't even assume the others are transitional because they are not on the direct line. The chart puts them out of the direct line therefore out of the transitional fossil possibility. The chart simply is self debunking.

We know that transitional fossils aren't direct ancestors! That's what I've been trying to tell you the entire time! Transitional fossils are not and never have been assumed to be direct ancestors to anything. I told you this in my very first post to you:

a transitional fossil is one that demonstrates characteristics in common both with its ancestral and descendent groups. As such, it may serve as a suitable representative of how morphological changes proceeded over time, and may have been closely related in some way to a true direct ancestor. The definition does not imply or assume that any such fossil represents direct relation or ancestry to any other

Now for the fifth(?) time, underlined and bolded, trying to show direct ancestry is not the purpose of this chart! All it wants to do is tell you what group is related to what. We don't assume direct ancestry to figure this out, largely because we don't need or want to as evolution is not linear. Ergo, the chart is not debunking itself in any way. The fossils in question, Dorudon etc., are the best representatives we have of what the actual ancestors might have been like. They are also a part of a long, complex evolutionary lineage that is illustrated using the lines in the tree. More importantly they are the specimens from which the data (i.e., the traits or characters) was taken to produce the pattern you see in the chart. That specific branching pattern forms the sister groups that lay out for you how the lineages of these animals are related, which in turn gives insight into how traits changed across species and time. That's the evidence that's been staring you in the face the entire time.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Serendipity is an amazing thing. Misconception Monday: Do You Talk Tree? Part 1, 2, 3, and 4.

 

[ldmitruk]

Also you can assume those are not transitional [sic] direct ancestors ... fine from the chart you must accept that. I guess the question then is : where are the transistional fossils in the whale chart?

Check out the following video as it gives a good explanation of how transitional fossils work.
[showmore=There Was No First Human][/showmore]

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Bernhard, I'm glad to see that you're beginning to see how the chart links these mammals and - also - that you apologised for your error in saying that Isotelus was wrong/misrepresenting the chart.

And no... There is no evidence staring me in the face because the direct line from top to bottom is hidden... There are zero fossils on the direct line, which is how it is hidden. So take dorudon and basilosaurus for example. Ok the dorudon is not the direct ancestor... The dorudon is a sister group. Ok so what is the direct ancestor to the basilosaurus? where are the fossils directly linking the dorudon and the basilosaurus?

Just to help make things easier, I'll reproduce the chart here so that we don't have to keep flicking back-and-forth between pages on the forum:

Your question is where are the fossils that link these two - and others - on the chart? At the moment, these have yet to be discovered. However, this does not mean that they don't exist - the scientists just have to find them.

Lest you think that this renders the claims of their relatedness weak/non-existent, let me give a biblical example.

The synoptic gospels of Matthew and Luke share the "same eye" because they share a common source - Mark. What if Mark was unknown? We'd have only Matthew and Luke and would see that they share parts in common, though we'd also see that they were not father-son, but cousins in that they shared a "common source (ancestor)", which would be as yet unknown. Once Mark was discovered, it would be obvious that this was the "common ancestor". (There are also arguments for another source - Q, but that's another story.)

But until then, would it be right to deny that Matthew and Luke were "cousins" and that they shared a unknown "common ancestor"?

Of course not.

And so it is with the chart - the common ancestors must have existed, because the relationship between the whales based on how their ear-bones changed over time is unmistakeable and shows that they have to be related to each other through a common ancestor.

To give another example:

If you were told that you had relatives all over the world - even in places that you "couldn't have" - you might reject that idea.

But all you have to do is go back up your family tree into your distant ancestors, and then come forward, following new paths to find distant relatives all over the world - even of other ethnicities.

Indeed, if you go back far enough, you'll discover we're all related - all of us in this discussion are "cousins" many times removed - which is what Darwin pointed out.

Does that make sense?

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

So we agree you have no evidence then for the transistional fossils in the whae chart.

So you believe that they are out there ... You don't have them but because you believe evolution is the process then you believe scientists have to find them yet.

Again that is faith in evolution.

You believe the chart is accurate, with no transitionals, with no transitional evidence. Therefore your agreement with evolution of whales is faith based.

It can't be evidence because you agree " scientists have to find them yet"

You are assuming because evolution is true that one day they will be found. But in the meantime they are not found. That's faith.

I hope you are beginning to understand your faith in evolution.

I don't believe that the transistionals are out there because of the massive amount of fossils around there has never been a transistional found. No transistional in any chart, any map, anywhere and there never will be. Understand that.

If you do not agree with the fact that there is not even one transistional found then you will begin to understand your entire evolution theory is faith based. Not just the whale chart but every alleged order of evolution put on paper.. Zero transistionals... And scientists will continue looking for what is not there.... Believing what is not there... Whatever. But the point remains if your waiting for scientists to find transistionals... I'm telling you they will never be found.

Therefore evolution is a faith, a belief without evidence. Therefore evolution is a religion. If you want to believe evolution.. That is your prerogative but to claim evidence " above the species level" is to lack understanding.

And like I proved there are no transistionals on the whale chart, I can prove every other claimed transistional is based on faith.
Therefore evolution fails as a science. Because there is no evidence for evolution.

You mistake logical inference(s) based on patterns of existing empiric evidence for faith - that is simply not the case.

Faith is belief without empiric evidence.

Transitional fossils exist - we've found them: what do you think all those whales on the chart are?

Tiktaalik is a transitional fossil - it shares characteristics with fish and characteristics with tetrapods.

Its existence was predicted using the theory of evolution - it was found in rock strata of the predicted time period and where it was expected to be found.

That's the power of the theory of evolution.

Your denial of this does not render it false.

I would urge you to read Shubin's book on the finding of Tiktaalik.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[ldmitruk]

To the claim " there was no first human" I will offer no rebuttal. It is patently false. If you can't understand the why then really ask another.

I simply claim there was a first human. I offer no evidence. If you don't believe that your problem not mine.

And yet you reject evolution because you claim there is no evidence and are not willing to provide evidence for a first human. Pot meet kettle.

 

[Rumraket]

The whales are not transitional... They are sister groups.. Not direct ancestors. Like seriously we just went over this... But I'm going to show you why tiktaalik is not a transitional fossil.

They are morphological transitionals, but probably not direct descendants. They are contemporaneous with the time-period at which the transition took place, there is just not a good probability they are direct ancestors because it is unlikely that among many sisters species that would have existed at the time, we happen to find a fossil of the one lineage that lead to us. That still makes them a bona fide transitional species, since they have transitional features.

You have been mislead about what a transitional fossil is supposed to be. It was never supposed to be our direct ancestor, this is a common misconception, one I also held for a long time myself.

Despite all this, tiktaalik is also still a transitional species. Why? Because it has morphologically transitional properties between lobe-finned fish and true tetrapods. That's all it takes, it doesn't have to have every facet of it's anatomy be a "middle ground" between the two groups (another common misconception), and it doesn't have to be a direct ancestor. A transitional species is merely an organims that shows a chimeric mix of anatomical features from two groups, that would make it qualify as a transitional species, transitional between the two groups it is "bridging".

 

[DutchLiam84]

Dude, if you're going to copy/paste your virtual bullcrap on this site, at least do the original source the courtesy to reference it. And put them in quotation marks. This is literally plagiarism that you're doing here. An absolute nono in the scientific community.

 

[Rumraket]

It's wrong... Tetrapods have been dated before tiktaalik.

That is irrelevant, tiktaalik would still be a transitional species because it has transitional features.