Peanut Gallary for “’Debate’ (sort of): The Origin..."

[he_who_is_nobody]

Maybe it is better that you end this and arbitrarily claim victory.

Arbitrarily? The "debate" was "The evidence that whales are the descendents of land animals "¦ beyond reasonable doubt." It appears that ProcInc has covered this in depth, so well in fact, that you have started to shift the discussion from the topic to "the last common ancestor of whales and hippos". In order to argue this point you must accept that whales were once land animals, thus ProcInc obtained what he set out to do making him the victor.

There is nothing arbitrary about that decision.

We havent even got into the problems with population genetics and low population density, as well as many other finer details that have yet to be spoken of.

Unless those subjects are relevant to the topic at hand (i.e. evidence against whales being descendant from land animals), this would be another example of you straying away from the topic.

One main reason you were unable to bring up those subjects (giving benthemiester the benefit of the doubt) was that you obfuscated about irrelevant subjects (e.g. out dated pictures of whale ancestors, the last common ancestor of hippos and whales, etc"¦). You really need to learn to focus your tact to the topic at hand if you want to bring up all relevant points in a discussion. Otherwise, we end up with something like this, where it seems you still are unable to determine the topic of this "debate".

I can handle being criticized, and even called names, but one thing that I would hate to have happen to me, is to get caught with my pants down, and have to publicly retract a whole week of bullshit because I was caught lying after stubbornly making up bullshit excuses to make a bullshit point that was logically indefensible from the beginning.

You mean like this?

In the book Evolution vs Creationism by Eugenie Scott, Janet Dryer who was the artist who drew these pictures of Pakicetus

Ben, Janet Dreyer (not Dryer) reproduced THIS drawing originally from Gingerich:

That is the accurate drawing, I already covered this:

The inaccurate artwork on the front cover of science was drawn by Karen Klitz

was praised by Eugenie Scott, director of the NSCE, which writes many lesson plans for teaching children evolution and who also sues any school district who critiques the theory. There was no mention of Dryer trying to dupe anyone. She seems to be praised by an organization of highly awarded scientist. It seems you continue to blame it on the artist in spite of this.

Here we end up with another example of your sheer incompetence. Do your research. You confused Dreyer (who reproduced Gingerich's accurate drawing) with Karen Klitz (who painted the Science cover)

Janet Dryer is also a member of the NSCE and a scientist with a PHD in molecular biology as well as an artist. Those stupid people with their PHD's. She probably smokes pot too. lol

Your a funny guy. SImple adorable.

I don't think anything needs to be added to this. I may as well simply stop replying here since you have damaged yourself beyind repair with such a exemplary horrible statement which is now on permanent record. You are probably going to try and write this off later as an example of your "quirky sense of humour that not everyone gets".

But really, you've essentially list everything you had left here.

Moreover, this is just one of your more egregious examples of "being caught with your pants down". In addition, this is something that you still have not acknowledged.

 

[ProcInc]

To anybody who is interested with recent work regarding the ancestry of the Hippo (Since it has been mentioned inappropriately in the debate) there are a few recent articles of topical interest:

For instance we have a very informative blog entry by Brian Switek

as well as review articles here, here and here

All appear to support evidence pertaining to an acanthrothere ancestor to Hippopotami.

The alternative proposed by Martin Pickford appears to be a bit of a fringe hypothesis of no real scientific value.

This is understandable since Pickford is more of an expert on Paleoanthropology than this particular field

It is worth noting that Pickford's alternative ancestral line to Hippos (palaeochoerids) is a group that covers "Old World Peccaries" and other such related species. Certainly not a candidate supported well by scientific data.

Also I am aware that the "Debate" now not even deserves the title of a pseudodebate. It's just an argument. I really don't see the point in restricting external input anymore.

 

[fightofthejellyfish]

Here is a another definition of the word homology which I maintain means similarity and you say doesn't.

"¢ Earth-Science-Online-Dictionary
"¢
"¢ Homology (anthropology), analogy between human beliefs, practices or artifacts owing to genetic or historical connections
"¢ Homology (biology), similarities between the anatomy, nucleic or amino acid sequences / structures in organisms owing to shared

So the museums and the dictionaries that don't agree with you are wrong? Thats what I meant by saying nothing can contradict you, because you always come up with some silly excuse to try to squirm out of it.

My word, why don't people understand this? It has to be explained in every debate on this forum: Dictionaries are descriptive. A dictionary doesn't tell you what words mean, it documents how words are commonly used even if that usage is wrong. Academic discourse requires more rigorous definitions than that. It requires that people are discussing the same concept. Dictionaries are useless for this type of discussion. What you should be doing, at the least, is reading an encyclopaedia entry so that you understand the concept being discussed, concepts that usually can't be expressed in a single sentence dictionary format. Pasting a dictionary entry is demonstrating to everyone that you have no understanding of the concept being discussed.

DICTIONARIES CORRECTLY DESCRIBE INCORRECT USAGE, THAT IS THEIR JOB.

But even so your definition is reasonably correct. Ben do you see that "similarities between... structures" is very different to any old superficial unspecified "similarity"?

Again what ben posts refutes his own assertion. This "debate" is really unfair, Procinc and ben shouldn't be ganging up on ben like this.
[/rant]

In the paper I cited "Molecular Evidence for the Origin of Whales"

ben, this is not a paper. It is a study guide for elementary school kids, based on old encyclopaedias and a magazine article.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant some people can be in public.

The study below goes into great detail concerning the conflicting data between the disciplines already cited, and discusses the problems with many different alternative hypothesis that try to resolve these conflicting opinions

Benthemiester, did you even read your own citation or did you eagerly parrot this claim from some creationist propaganda mill? Anyone that reads your citation can plainly see that what you are claiming is false (besides being irrelevant to this discussion).

ProcInc has maintained from the beginning that hippos are the closes living relative to whales. ProcInc has also maintained that if we factor in extinct relatives, hippos and whales might not be exclusively a sister taxa. Your citation is exploring this problem. Allow me to demonstrate:

et al.[/i] (2005)"]However, the discovery of Pakistani early
cetaceans recently brought some conclusive anatomical support
to the clade Cetartiodactyla (29). Indeed, the astragali of these
fossil forms exhibit a distal trochlea, seen until now as an
unequivocal synapomorphy uniting all artiodactyls and absent in
mesonychians. As a consequence, the debate is now ready to
refocus on the relationships within the Cetartiodactyla. Morphologists
have already offered a variety of hypotheses, cetaceans
alternatively being assumed to be the sister group of all
artiodactyls (30, 31), of the ''anthracotherioids'' (29, 32), of the
Hippopotamidae (33), of the entelodonts (figure 2a in ref. 28),
or of the ruminants (figure 2b in ref. 28).

This was in the introduction. To be even clearer, the introduction also says this:

et al.[/i] (2005)"]Therefore, the present morphological
analysis aims to clarify the phylogenetic position of the Hippopotamidae
among artiodactyls.

If they are trying to clarify hippos among artiodactyls, they must be taking for granted that hippos are artiodactyls.

Now, if we look at their cladogram (as well as the body of the article), it supports exactly what ProcInc has been saying. Their cladogram places Hippos within Anthracotheres (an extinct clade) which make up a sister grouping with Archaeocetes (which gave rise to modern whales). Thus, hippos are the closes living relative to whales.

I maintain that the worse thing a creationist can ever do is cite their sources. This allows people to expose their ignorance and falsehoods with ease. In most cases, such as this one, it also demonstrates their poor reading comprehension skills.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Also I am aware that the "Debate" now not even deserves the title of a pseudodebate. It's just an argument. I really don't see the point in restricting external input anymore.

Well in that case, I will repost my response there as well.