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[PearlWatson]

What bears and whales and evolution denying paleontologists? You appear to know next to nothing about evolution, or even science in general. You can go back to crying about media being mean to you and your conservative sycophants. I have no interest in pursuing this any further.

Nice tantrum, but I'll go ahead and answer your question:

Darwin's story about how natural selection works to turn a bear into a whale:

"In North America the black bear was seen . . . swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."

Darwin's talks about paleontological objections:

The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, (must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory (Darwin, 1859, p. 292).

Additionally, natural selection has nothing to do with chance. Mutations are unpredictable, of course, but selection is not random. Are you doubting that natural selection happens?

Natural Selection is nothing but a circular statement.
Darwiniac: "Through the process of natural selection the fittest survive."
Critic: "Who are the "fittest?"
Darwiniac: "The ones who survive!" "It happens every time."

That's some sweet "science" right there, people!

 

[sirkickyass]

You're a lawyer, I suppose.

In law school, I hear they teach the principles of ad hominem attack as a substitute for actual evidence.

In my logic classes, they told me that the ad hominem argument is normally a fallacy.

If someone tells me they believe the earth is flat and that our planet is the center of the solar system with the sun revolving around us I use that as information relevant to their level of knowledge about geography, astronomy, and any other number of scientific disciplines.

When Crichton's views on how global warming is a scam are held up as some kind of pillar of respectability, it is fair game to point out all the other totally and obviously bogus things he believes. This is especially true when the point he was cited for is being used to argue that the tiniest minority of scientists are somehow always right.

I have to put it in these terms very naked terms because PearlWatson has (purposely?) misunderstood this argument at least twice. Once apparently believing that I was trying to point out Crichton was dead and another time thinking I was saying he was writing about these things as part of science fiction. When you're dealing with children, you have to use blunt force instruments in your language.

 

[sirkickyass]

Nice tantrum, but I'll go ahead and answer your question:

Darwin's story about how natural selection works to turn a bear into a whale:

It's funny how our understanding has changed in the subsequent 150 years.

Darwin's talks about paleontological objections:

Fossils are the exception. Most bodies are fully decomposed. Intermediate and transitional states have a) been found but people like to move the goalposts until they're demanding to see every generation, but b) would always be very rare. That's because (as noted in the e coli study and numerous other studies related to speciation) large positive and viewable changes spread throughout the population very quickly such that the amount of time that the new variation is actually extant simultaneously with the old species is very short in geologic terms. A total changeover can easily happen in just 20 generations. Less than that in small. localized populations.

Just out of curiosity, what is your education in?

 

[Siro]

Nice tantrum, but I'll go ahead and answer your question:

Darwin's story about how natural selection works to turn a bear into a whale:



Darwin's talks about paleontological objections:





Natural Selection is nothing but a circular statement.
Darwiniac: "Through the process of natural selection the fittest survive."
Critic: "Who are the "fittest?"
Darwiniac: "The ones who survive!" "It happens every time."

That's some sweet "science" right there, people!

No you're completely wrong. Everything you said is hundreds of years out of date. Just because you worship the ignorant rabble who feed you the garbage that fills your brain does not mean everyone else does (like the drug addled whale in your signature). Darwin is just a man. His speculations are immaterial. His opinion on the subject of bears does not relate in any way to the modern evidence for evolution.

Even if what you showed shows the position of "paleontologists" a century and a half ago, it remains irrelevant. Again, just because you cannot comprehend the nature of scientific inquiry does not mean the fault lies in science itself. The opinion of 1850s geologists on evolution is about as relevant as Plato's opinion on Newtonian mechanics. Science evolves with time, data, and understanding. Is that really such an alien concept to you?

Stop participating in a subject you don't understand, you'd be embarrassing yourself had you any shame.

 

[One Brow]

Darwin's story about how natural selection works to turn a bear into a whale:

Actually, he said it could turn into something the size of a whale. Being the size of a whale does not make you a whale.

Darwin's talks about paleontological objections:

The fossil record discoveries in the past 150 years have offered only support to evolutionary theory.

Natural Selection is nothing but a circular statement.
Darwiniac: "Through the process of natural selection the fittest survive."
Critic: "Who are the "fittest?"
Darwiniac: "The ones who survive!" "It happens every time."

That's some sweet "science" right there, people!

https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html

You offered some sweet stupidity, there.

 

[franklin]

The fossil record discoveries in the past 150 years have offered only support to evolutionary theory.

Not that I care to discuss the big picture here, but how would the fossil record ever really do the opposite? Age inconsistencies from geological formations maybe?

 

[Siro]

Not that I care to discuss the big picture here, but how would the fossil record ever really do the opposite? Age inconsistencies from geological formations maybe?

Any fossil record that does not follow evolutionary patterns would falsify many aspects of the theory. For example, we know the link between birds and dinosaurs, as suggested by DNA evidence and other observations. If evolution did not happen, you'd have birds and dinosaurs in mixed layers without any regard to the age of the strata. Same with all other species. Right now, physical adaptations are very easy to see in numerous fossils, and the geological data confirms that observable evolutionary path. No 100 million year old formations will contain any humans, and no 20000 ones will contain any dinosaurs. The only way this could happen is if species slowly evolved over long periods. Or if they were created with related features over long periods, for some reason.

 

[franklin]

By the way, I have the answers to everything & here's how evolution went down: God made everything except man through evolution & then sent Adam & Eve down because he ran out of clever names for the new creatures & wanted them to catalog the beasts instead. All went well until some of the Adamspawn went off the picturesque island reservation & started dipping into jungle boogie, having pristine poolside orgies with Europeanized Neanderthal ladies with hair pulling fettishes. Hawt!

God couldn't have any of this hybrid nonsense since the offspring were all sterile & looked like a harry Andy Dick-Greg Miller mix. He stewed over the question of what to do for a few days, but this creature was so obnoxious that God lost it one day & kicked sea water over Adam Island, drowning all the Dick Millers, their Neanderthal parents, & every human except Adam & a couple lucky friends who happened to be high up in trees chucking coconuts at Ham for seeing Noah's gibblets, & probably drinking the last of his wine too. Can't really blame the act; I want to drown Greggy Boy myself.

So then a few thousand years goes by and one night Moses runs out of stories to tell around the burning bush. Never failing to impress, Moses puts a tiny little spin about worldwide flood & such. Well, anyone who knows anything about old school Jews knows they wrote everything down. A copy made it back to Moses, who gave it a once over & said "Meh, close enough". And that's where we all came from.

 

[TheSilencer1313]

So you're not a creationist? Go on. Answer. Tell us how you don't buy into other people's religion unless it's, you know, actual religion.

Don't worry. Siromar has to have a title for everything.
You believe that man evolved from dog ****.....
Then you're for sure a bowel movementist.

 

[Siro]

Don't worry. Siromar has to have a title for everything.
You believe that man evolved from dog ****.....
Then you're for sure a bowel movementist.

Cute kid.

 

[TheSilencer1313]

Cute kid.

Totally.

 

[Siro]

Totally.

You know what sucks? Heavy metal.

In your face!

 

[One Brow]

Not that I care to discuss the big picture here, but how would the fossil record ever really do the opposite? Age inconsistencies from geological formations maybe?

The classic example is the rabbit fossil in the middle of an undisturbed bed of Cambrian rock, aka the "Cambrian rabbit".

 

[TheSilencer1313]

You know what sucks? Heavy metal.

In your face!

No way man.

That's like saying Wagner sucks!

 

[Siro]

No way man.

That's like saying Wagner sucks!

Touche.

 

[PearlWatson]

No you're completely wrong. Everything you said is hundreds of years out of date. Just because you worship the ignorant rabble who feed you the garbage that fills your brain does not mean everyone else does (like the drug addled whale in your signature). Darwin is just a man. His speculations are immaterial. His opinion on the subject of bears does not relate in any way to the modern evidence for evolution.

Even if what you showed shows the position of "paleontologists" a century and a half ago, it remains irrelevant. Again, just because you cannot comprehend the nature of scientific inquiry does not mean the fault lies in science itself. The opinion of 1850s geologists on evolution is about as relevant as Plato's opinion on Newtonian mechanics. Science evolves with time, data, and understanding. Is that really such an alien concept to you?

You asked about Darwin's bear to whale stories and I gave it to you.
You asked about the paleontolists objections and I provided a quote from Darwin acknowledging them.

Darwiniacs running away from Darwin's explanations of natural selection is like Mormons running away from Joseph Smith's explanations of the godhead.

The comical circular logic of natural selection hasn't changed since Darwin. In fact, I just got through responding to you going on about how the invisible hand of nature reaches out and selects those beneficial accidentally mutated attributes with 100% accuracy.

Let's not pretend that Darwiniacs don't still believe that whales evolved from bears. They go on and on about how whales have "useless" bear bones inside, but it turns out they actually use those "bear" bones for mating.

Even the Darwiniac apologists' modern "punctuated equilibrium" prophecy to deal with the sad state of the fossil record is crazy ***. They prophesy that "your parents were slugs and then suddenly--but totally at random--you evolve into a gecko and your brother evolves into a shark and your sister evolves into a polar bear and the guy down the street evolves into a porpoise and so on--and then everyone relaxes by the pool for 150 million years, virtually unchanged. And this all happened completely by chance."

It is absurd that this kind of crap is sold to school children as science. Darwinism is about as scientifically based as Scientology. Give all us God believers a break. We have our own miracle stories we like much better.

 

[PearlWatson]

What Flat Earther Crichton said about Global Warming:

To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world -- increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.

This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynman called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.

Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?

That last paragraph is pretty funny even if it does come from that dumdum Crichton.

 

[Darkwing Duck]

You asked about Darwin's bear to whale stories and I gave it to you.
You asked about the paleontolists objections and I provided a quote from Darwin acknowledging them.

Darwiniacs running away from Darwin's explanations of natural selection is like Mormons running away from Joseph Smith's explanations of the godhead.

The comical circular logic of natural selection hasn't changed since Darwin. In fact, I just got through responding to you going on about how the invisible hand of nature reaches out and selects those beneficial accidentally mutated attributes with 100% accuracy.

Let's not pretend that Darwiniacs don't still believe that whales evolved from bears. They go on and on about how whales have "useless" bear bones inside, but it turns out they actually use those "bear" bones for mating.

Even the Darwiniac apologists' modern "punctuated equilibrium" prophecy to deal with the sad state of the fossil record is crazy ***. They prophesy that "your parents were slugs and then suddenly--but totally at random--you evolve into a gecko and your brother evolves into a shark and your sister evolves into a polar bear and the guy down the street evolves into a porpoise and so on--and then everyone relaxes by the pool for 150 million years, virtually unchanged. And this all happened completely by chance."

It is absurd that this kind of crap is sold to school children as science. Darwinism is about as scientifically based as Scientology. Give all us God believers a break. We have our own miracle stories we like much better.

What the hell are you talking about? There's not one sentence that isn't rife with misinformation, lies, or made up tripe.

 

[Stoked]

What the hell are you talking about? There's not one sentence that isn't rife with misinformation, lies, or made up tripe.

Why are you so suprised?

 

[Siro]

What the hell are you talking about? There's not one sentence that isn't rife with misinformation, lies, or made up tripe.

He doesn't seem to know anything at all about the theory. There is no point in debating him.