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Racing Dinosaurs with Spoilers
PhilHibbs writes "The BBC is reporting a new theory - dinosaurs flapped their proto-wings to generate downforce for added traction when running up-hill. Another one to add to the many theories of the evolution of flight."
The biggest problem I see with the whole evolution thing is
that the more we dig, the more find weirder and weirder
species that seem to have nothing to do with what's around
today. Doesn't the evolution theory predict that we should
be finding a lot of intermediate forms of present day species?
Is there even a single species where we can find a complete
chain of intermediate forms between it and a previous species
that it evolved from?
Simultaneously, the dinosaurs decided to develop hollow bones, a totally different lung system, flight muscles, brain modifications, dietary modifications, new digestive and excretory systems, new behavioral instincts, flight feathers, and everything else that goes along with aeronautical engineering. Just how that happened is somehow glossed over.
What is most incredible is how all the lazy news sources parrot this story uncritically, with literally no one asking the hard questions about how flight could evolve with all of these complex subsystems working together. If they present any controversy at all, it is only about which evolutionary tall tale is better than the others.
Examples: "Scientific" American, Nature, EurekAlot, New Scientist, ABC, etc.
It seems as if only creationists have the guts to pull the curtains from the wizards of awes and call a dumb story dumb. Want to add your entry to this storytelling contest? Send it in to Science and see if it passes peer review. They don't seem to be too particular these days, as long as you toe the Darwin Party line. You might even get NSF money and 15 minutes of fame. Try this science project: drop lizards out of trees and measure their flapping rates. Just be sure you take good lab notes and draw pretty graphs so that it looks scientific. Videos also make good supplementary material. Just don't show the blood on the ground and proves how absurd this all really is.