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Jurassic Beavers Challenge Current Mammal Theories
Bombula writes "According to a BBC article, Castorocauda lutrasimilis, a beaver-like creature discovered in the Jiulongshan Formation in China which apparently lived 164 million years ago, poses challenges to conventional theory of mammalian history. That is, of course, assuming this is a genuine fossil - no small assumption, given Chinese fossils' track record of forgery, fabrication, and fraud."
You can find some examples of fossil forgeries at http://www.paleodirect.com/fakechinesefossils1.htm
Can we please have some examples of this fraud? I'm an ignorant American...
Remember, when confronted with a Jurassic Beaver, make sure to stand perfectly still. They can only see movement.
OH NO....ARGHHHHHHH!!!
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
I suppose papermaking, the compass, gunpowder and printing never were that noteworthy anyway...
from the annals of improbable research:
"The Okamura Fossil Laboratory," by Earle Spamer. During the 1970s and 1980s Japanese paleontologist Chonusuke Okamura published a profusion of microphotographs. These documented the fossils of previously unknown "minicreatures" -- minireptiles, minibirds, minidinosaurs, minidragons and minivertebrates. All of these creatures were 1.0-1.5 milimeters in size. [This report includes photomicrographs of a minibrontosaurus (Brontosaurus excelsus miniorientalis), a miniwoman (Homo sapiens miniorientalis), a Silurian miniduck (Archaeoanus japonica), and other specimens. --see: AIR, vol. 1, no. 4, July/August 1995, pp. 4-9. NOTE: The following US institutions hold copies of the original "Reports of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory. We urge you to visit them: Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia); Colorado School of Mines Cornell University Denver Public Library Field Museum of Natural History Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Kent State University Pell Marine Science Library (Naragansett RI) Smithsonian Institution US Geological Survey (Reston VA) UC Los Angeles UC San Diego University of Houston University of Texas at Austin University of Wyoming Readers from outside the US are urged to help us compile a complete international list of Okamura sites. (Please e-mail the info to spamer@say.acnatsci.org)
i believe this is a fabulous example of fossil science gone horribly wrong...It's easy to tell if it's a real Chinese beaver or not. Real Chinese beavers are very small and they taste like salted cashews.
The article's authors must have been less interested in generating Australian interest than Slashdot sometimes seems to be, but save for the shape of its mouth the fossilised critter appears to have had much more in common with Australia's peculiar aquatic monotreme than with the mentioned northern hemisphere placentals.
The fossil even has spurs on its hind legs just where the modern platypus has its unique-amongst-mammalia poison delivery system. Front legs equipped for burrowing suggests in may have also used very playpus-like diggings.
While detailed dental structure is particularly important for cladistics, it is also something that can be subject to high selection pressure -- you have to keep eating -- so it would not be that unlikely that an otter-like snout would evolve into that equally unique to mammals duck bill during a 165 million year river journey from China to Oz.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Why is every other discovery a "challenge" to evolution theory? We she call them "improvements", that would be much more positive.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
On the other hand - the mammals didn't originate from nothing 65 million years ago, but they were at the time more adaptable than the reptiles. This means that mammals must have existed earlier than 65 million years ago, but it is likely that they resembled mice and other small mammals and fed on insects and vegetation.
Most fossils that we actually have from the jurassic period are large and important as they seem they are likely to be the top of an iceberg where the mass of animals are likely to be small. Unfortunately - small dead animals are likely to dissolve completely or have been eaten to the very last piece. This means that finding small fossilized animals will help us to understand the evolution better - so start digging!
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Right, because the only possible explanation for this must be that our entire theory of evolution must be out to lunch. No, it couldn't possibly be anything else /sarcasm.
Every single time the theory of evolution needs to be revised, you ID/creationist zealots pounce and proclaim that "evolution is disproved!!!" Bullshit.
A scientific theory is subject to revision when and if new data shows itself. That is in part why they're called theories - theory in science does not mean "guess", as ID proponants like to insinuate, but rather means an explanation for a phenominon that is as current as our understanding can make it. When we learn more, we go back and make changes to a theory to account for the new data.
Theories are almost never completely thrown out, but are often radically altered as we become more knowledgeable; Einstein didn't disprove Newton's theories about motion, but because of him we do know far more than Newton did in his time.
This does not disprove Darwin. Quit salavating; your bias is showing.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
In a seperate article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, they talked with the rep from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who was part of the team that made the discovery. It was not solely Chinese. It was funded by the Carnegie and I suppose the fossils will be on display in PIttsburgh at some point.
I would highly appreciate if someone pointed me to the mentioned Chinese fossils' track record of forgery, fabrication, and fraud.
PS Complaint without URL looks like a slander :-).
This is kind of OT, but a friend in an archeology program told me once that Chinese interpretations of artifacts are a little unusual sometimes. An American team in China dug up a village from a few thousand years ago that was fairly typical, including a large structure in the middle of the village. The typical interpretation is that the building was where the "big man" of the village lived, i.e. the guy who ran the village. Villages everywhere have these buildings.
The Chinese government's interpretation of it was that it was a communal house where many people lived and worked, thereby proving that Communism existed in China thousands of years before Marx and Mao.
That sounds weird. Fish and milk?
Mammals evolved from reptiles that were fairly large. Over time most wound up the size mice to a modest sized rat. There almost has to be other even larger mammals earlier than the one found. Dropping size seemed to be nessaccary for survival but they always had the potential to be bigger. All indications were Dinosaurs weren't out competed by mammals but their passing openning an opportunity for mammals to take over. Also a it's inaccurate that dinosaurs turned into birds. A group split off and formed birds long before the others went extinct. There's even indications that the group that formed birds split off not long after Dinosaurs and mammals split so it's more a case of parallel development than dinosaurs evolving into birds. Kind of like saying chimpanzees evolved into man. We're genetically similar but our closest ancestor was something like 8 million years ago. People still have a lot of trouble with the idea dinosaurs went extinct so it's comforting to think of them being around in the form of birds but T-Rexs didn't evolve into parakeets they died out. The first birds even predate T-Rex. They were Jurrasic if not even Triassic and they evolved from much smaller animals. There are lots of theories but the truth is no one knows why dinosaurs died out and we may never know. They were hardly a failure as was pushed for many years. They dominated the earth longer than any other higher animal.
Torrents for Jurassic Beavers 2 & 3 already on line...
Task Mangler
The study of DNA proves animals evolved from other animals. Entire family trees of animal evolution can and are being drawn up. For example look at the way dogs have evolved from Wolves.0 1/01/html/ft_20020101.1.html
:)
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/
And even wolves evolved from animals before them and so on, generation after generation for millions of years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote
ID is wrong, has always been wrong and will always remain wrong. Get over it.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
The JURASSIC BEAVERS!
Yeah!
Heh! Right you are! For all the accusations that Americans are ignorant of the outside world, you should hear the stuff some non-Americans think about the U.S! A Chinese student comes here from Shanghai, and then returns home for a visit halfway through college. Her friends, who have never left China, all say, "You're lucky; you get to eat nothing but pizza and hamburgers!" and "Isn't it scary that they all have guns and shoot each other?" Really happened! People honestly believe this stuff!
Pardon me while I run out to McDonald's in my H2. I'll shoot my next door neighbor just as soon as I get back!
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/02/23/jurassi c.beaver.ap/index.html
that iron was in that mixture?
Chinese fossils' track record of forgery, fabrication, and fraud.
Everyone knows chinese fossils lie and cannot be trusted. Remember that fossil that claimed to be a dragon?
Chinese fossils, like anyone else's fossils, get peer reviewed and can withstand a little critical scrutiny from sources whose motives are largely unknown. That said, the palaeontological record from China is pretty amazing, as anyone with enough linguistic competence to access the world's most spoken modern language might realize. Also, on the face of it, the likelihood of a fossil like this being found eventually is pretty high. Fur and feathers are complex, well-adapted structures rather far removed in time from their origins as reptilian scales -- which bespeaks an immensity of time. Finding mammalian features like this in the Jurassic is wonderful, but not shocking.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
The tissue was inside the bone, and they had to chemically remove the hard minerals before they could take a look at the soft tissues preserved. So I think it's pretty reasonable to say number three, our assumptions about fossilization, is the thing we should be looking at changing.
It's funny how quick people are to throw out evolution.
This was published in Science . For the non-academics reading this, you need to know that Science has the most rigorous peer-review process of all the scientific journals. Unless someone here has material evidence that these are forgeries, I would advise all to accept these findings and restrict their critique to the scientific conclusions (that is if you have actually read the paper and have the necessary background to review the conclusions).
Anyone else think that this was about mating habits of old people?
It's funny how quick people are to throw out evolution.
I believe you've missed something:
People aren't quick to throw out evolution. They've thrown out evolution long ago, and are quick to jump on this and anything else they can find as evidence to support their existing beliefs.
(I don't believe the theory of evolution either, but I try not to jump on this sort of thing, because I have no doubt there will be a good explanation.)
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Actually, no, it doesn't prove that. If DNA determines what the animal will look like and how its body functions, then similar animals will have similar DNA, whether they are in any way related or not.
As for being able to draw family trees, you can take random strings and draw a "family tree" for them by comparing them and their differences to each other. With long enough strings, there's bound to be similar sequences, especially since DNA only has 4 possible "letters". These kind of diagrams can't be used to prove evolution, since they assume evolution as one of their prerequisites.
That might be, but your claims don't disprove it; in fact, it cannot be disproven, since it is simply impossible to prove that something happened by chance and not as a part of some kind of plan.
Flip a coin. Observe it land tails up. Did it land tails up by chance or because a supernatural being who made the universe had planned it that way before time began and either designed the universe in such a way that it would happen or used its supernatural power in present to make it happen ? Have fun trying to disprove the latter two possibilites ;).
Equating "unscientific" with "wrong" is a mistake. "Unscientific" simply means "not provable or disprovable by science". It does not say anything about truth or untruth of the claim.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Evolution is not a theory. It's an observed fact. Mutations are passed on to offspring. Agriculture is based on it. Darwin's theory is not evolution, but natural selection, which is a theory that evolution through mutations is all that is necessary to provide the stunning variety of life on earth.
Wooooosh! That was the sound of... never mind.
Clever signature text goes here.
"Actually, no, it doesn't prove that. If DNA determines what the animal will look like and how its body functions, then similar animals will have similar DNA, whether they are in any way related or not."
... "In biology, mutations are changes to the genetic material (usually DNA or RNA). Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division and by exposure to radiation, chemicals, or viruses, or can occur deliberately under cellular control during the processes such as meiosis or hypermutation"
Sorry but that is so profoundly ignorant of the facts about genetics. You may not (clearly do not) understand the science of genetics but you cannot deny that geneticists are able to alter plants and animals by manipulating the DNA because you can often see the results of their work with your own eyes. Also, you can see even more with microscopes etc.. (And once you have got as far as a microscope then try reading the actual science papers of their research).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene
e.g. "Genes are the units of heredity in living organisms. They are encoded in the organism's genetic material (usually DNA or RNA), and control the physical development and behaviour of the organism. During reproduction, the genetic material is passed on from the parent(s) to the offspring. Genetic material can also be passed between un-related individuals (e.g. via transfection, or on viruses). Genes encode the information necessary to construct the chemicals (proteins etc.) needed for the organism to function.
Science has actually proved that genes control the animals development and proved how parents pass on their genes.
And for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
So "Genes are the units of heredity in living organisms" and "mutations are changes to the genetic material" and "Mutations can be caused by copying errors"
Therefore mutations leading to the creatures offspring being altered. Also, this has been proved by many scientists with many experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_organism
Therefore, when we have variations of a creature then that variation may give an advantage to survival or a disadvantage. If its a disadvantage then unfortunately for that creature it will most likely get eaten by another creature.
However, if the variation (i.e. slight mutation) gives a slight advantage then it gives an slight increased chance of survival.
Now with many millions of generations each with millions of that type of creature per generation, then you have a lot of chances of small variations to be passed on.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
This fossil finally proves God exists!
It is the final nail in Darwin's coffin!
If this fossil really is 164 million years old then evilution is wrong and therefore the Bible is right and the earth was created by God 6000 years ago!
P.S.
The seconds law of thermodimechanics prooves evilution is impossible anyway.
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The bit about a challenge to current theories is mostly journalistic sensationalism. The Science article makes no such claim; only that it's an interesting new fossil of a (semi-)aquatic mammal from around 164 million years ago.
You'd be hard put to find any paleontologist who has ever insisted that such a mammal didn't exist. The most you'd find is a lack of mention of such a mammal. But the fossil record is notoriously incomplete, and nobody with any understanding at all would claim that the fossil record shows that something has never existed. Never fossilized, perhaps, though usually the claim would be even weaker: not found.
Jumping from "has now been found" to "a challenge to current theories" is rather irresponsible reporting, IMHO. In this case, such a fossil has been found, and adds something to the store of knowledge: There was a mammal similar (but probably not ancestral) to the modern beaver and platypus 164 million years ago. This adds to the known mammalian divergence at that time, but really has no impact on any scientific theories.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
?Informative?? Gakkk!
Your highschool biology teacher seriously needs to be shot. You don't have foggiest clue about genetics.
If DNA determines what the animal will look like and how its body functions, then similar animals will have similar DNA, whether they are in any way related or not.
That's like suggesting the New York Times and the Washington Post will contain the same sequence of letters and the same punctuation and the same pictures because they both reported on news for the same day.
Genes to do similar things will not be the least bit alike unless they are copied from the same parent source, just as two math textbooks will not contain the same sequence of letters unless they are copied from the same parent source. Octopus eyes look almost identical to human eyes and function almost identical to human eyes. The DNA code for octupus eyes and human eyes are about as similar as the letters in Romeo and Juliette compared to the letters in a Calculus text book.
Whale DNA is practically identical to hippo DNA, and is wildly different than fish DNA. That is because hippos are probably the closest living relative of whales.
As for being able to draw family trees, you can take random strings and draw a "family tree" for them by comparing them and their differences to each other. With long enough strings, there's bound to be similar sequences, especially since DNA only has 4 possible "letters".
Your math teacher needs to be shot too.
Even with only 4 letters, the odds of getting matches by chance goes to zero exponentially fast as you look at sequences of any signifigant length. In case the phrase "goes to zero exponentially fast" wasn't clear enough, the odds of you hitting the lottery jackpot every single week, week after week, for some number of months in a row.... that is what I mean by "goes to zero exponentially fast". And that's just looking at short genetic letter sequences. Looking at moderate length genetic sequences it's like hitting the lottery 5000 times out of 5200 consecutive weeks (100 years). The other 200 times you missed the jackpot by a single digit due to a mutation.
Two news articles reprorting the same news story will have COMPLETELY different letter sequences unless they are copied from the same original story. Two texts for two news stories that have 99.8% identical letter sequences are indisputably related and copied from a common source with that 0.2% misscopying.
As for being able to draw family trees
Evolution predicts an extremely strict tree pattern when comparing the genetics of the species on earth, and genetic analysis has confirmed that tree pattern to several hundred nines worth of a decimal places. That it is essentially infititely improbable for the matching tree pattern not to have cropped up by mere chance.
It is a real tree pattern and it provides conclusive poof that either evolution's tree of common decent is correct, or some other process indistingishable from evolution's common decent.
Let me give you a more concrete example of the sort of evidence we have. Every once in a while some fragment of viral DNA will accidentally get inserted into the host DNA and go inert, merely getting passed down to all dencedants. All across the DNA of every animal there are countless examples of such viral DNA insertions. The odds of two independant inserstions of identical viral DNA fragments at identical locations into the host DNA is essentially zero. However humans and chimps both have an identical viral DNA fragment inserted at an identical location. That is because there was a single insertion event in the human chimp ancestor. No other species on earth has this DNA fragment at this location. Going further back in the family tree, there is another such identical viral DNA insertion at an identical location in humans and chimps and apes. No other species on earth has this DNA fragment at this location. There's no example shared by humans
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A correct theory must explain all observations. Natural selection has real problems with this: there is a rather big descriptive gap between supernova remnant and the simplest bacterium. That doesn't mean the theory is wrong, just incomplete, and leaves room for all sorts of weird and/or wonderful things.
Didn't someone call into Howard Stern a couple years ago (2002) to name a newly discovered beaver after Gary? I can't remember the names they came up with, but I do recall it being an extinct creature.
Ta Ta Toothicus? I can't find any links, but I thought someone else might remember.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Mmm, trolls. I love when people bring up the second law of thermodynamics, because it only proves that they're idiots who've never taken a science class or thought critically about anything in their lives.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I am in partial agreement with you, however... "That's like suggesting the New York Times and the Washington Post will contain the same sequence of letters and the same punctuation and the same pictures because they both reported on news for the same day." Remember, DNA doesn't have punctuation, and only conists of 4 characters: G, T, C and A. You're somewhat distorting to picture to support your own view (Upper)26+(Lower)26+(Numeric)10+(Punctuation)?? is quite a different total than 4. Perhaps your math teacher should have been "shot" (that's going a bit far, don't ya think?) "religious fundamentalists who are hung up on this rediculous idea that science and God are in conflict." Partial truth. Sure, some of them are, but you also have the OTHER SIDE which feels they're in conflict, although you may not be among that school of thought. There are some people out there who are atheistic/agnostic and feel this way: Liberal christianity makes less sense than fundumentalist orthodoxy (redundancy in action :D), and that members of a faith should believe EVERYTHING their little (or big) book tells them, or otherwise they might as well not bother believing anything.
"And yes, that body of work commonly known as ID is indeed wrong"
Well, it depends how you define "intelligent design". Seems to me a lot of people have this notion that there's only one definition of intelligent design, and it's creationism without evolution at all. I'll admit, I see such a thing as doubtful myself. Perhaps you should have said "Anti-Evolution Creationism".
Just so you're aware, this Jurassic Beaver dates back to 164 million years ago.
:)
I doubt it survived that flood you were talking about.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Not really, but I thought people might like a link to the Carnegie Museum's press release, which in turn links to a set of pictures of the beast. (Nice big pictures, too.)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
No, that's a complete theory, and there are very few of them. A correct theory simply has to have no incorrect parts. Newton's theory of gravity is incomplete but it can be made correct simply by defining the parameters within which it works (ie, well away from where relativistic effects occur).
The theory of evolution can never be complete because we will never know everything needed to complete it, but it appears to be correct within the parameters existing on the Earth for at least the whole of the fossil record.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Bah, on slashdot? I think you overestimate the amount of subtlety here :-) If he is being witty, he's doing too good of a job imitating the trolls.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
You're somewhat distorting to picture to support your own view (Upper)26+(Lower)26+(Numeric)10+(Punctuation)?? is quite a different total than 4.
No, I was completely correct. DNA text is vastly more than 4 times as long. If you were to cluster DNA into clusters of 4 then each 4-cluster has 4*4*4*4=64 possibilites. 64 is basicly the same range of one letter of alphanumeric text. 4 DNA letters is 1 text letter, and since the DNA is more than 4 times as long the DNA math probabilites then outstrip the english text probabilities.
Looking for a short DNA match of length 200 (and 200 is a very short DNA stretch) would be comparable to looking for a 50 letter text match. 50 letters is a sentence longer than this one is. What are the odds you will find the exact text "50 letters is a sentence longer than this one is" in someone else's post or in some book? Possible, but very very remote.
You start looking for short DNA sequences of even length 600 or 1000 and the chances of an independant match rapidly vanish to zero. You start doing sequencing of hundreds of millions or billions of bases in two species and finding 98.6% match... as there is between humans and chimps... and there is no way they are not minor derivatives from a common source. Imagine two encyclopedias where the text was 98.6% identical. Imagine a pair of book cases, each filed with shelves of books, and each bookshelf is a 98.6% match t the other. In one bookshelf you have Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette and in the other you have Shakespeare's RoWeo and Juliette. Replication with typos.
The same exact junk viral DNA fragments inserted at the exact same location. Even assuming the same exact viral DNA fragment was accidentally inserted in two independant events... that's still around a billion-to-one odds of it hitting the same spot. It's like finding the exact same three paragraph fragment of a photocopier manual inserted into the same exact spot in the Romeo and Juliette book and in the RoWeo and Juliette book.
Humans and chimps have the idential junk DNA fragment at the identical spot because we both inherited it from a single insertion event back in a common ancestor.
you also have the OTHER SIDE which feels they're in conflict
I'm no hypocrite... in all of the discussions on evolution on here I have seen exactly two... TWO... people on the evolution appear to imply such a conflict, and I jumped on both of them for it. And both of them backed off that they didn't mean to say there was a conflict.
I really think this "evolution side claiming a conflict" is a jolly old attempt to play the victim and play the persecution complex. I agree anyone making such a claim is wrong. However I still have not found anyone actually claiming that. The number of such people is pretty insignifigant, but the "defence" against such "attacks on religion" are rampant and frantic. It is an extremly common straw man against evolution side. I have seen countless anti-evolutionists directly imply that effectively ALL scientists are atheists and anti-Christian. Urrrk??? Do those people seriously think that Christians are somehow incapable of being scientists? LOL. In the ballpark of half of scientists are Christian, and of the Christian scientists only a fraction of one percent give any credence at all to creation science. As Christians they obviously believe in God and God creating the universe, they just think the 0.15% of creation scientists are fringe crackpots with their Young Earth timelines and junk attacks trying to discredit evolution.
Seems to me a lot of people have this notion that there's only one definition of intelligent design, and it's creationism without evolution at all.
The very term Intelligent Design was invented and promoted by the Discovery Institute and their daughter group the Center for Science and Culture. They explicitly developed it in response to a Supreme Court ruling that they could not teach Biblical Creationism in public highscools. They explicit
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An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
From your statement, I assume you don't agree with Darwinian theory (perhaps for religious reasons). However, I'll make the observation that Jesus said never to retaliate, and to love your enemy. And besides, Darwin wasn't even your enemy. I lose my temper sometimes. I can't blame you, but if you're gonna stand up for Jesus then try to maintain his principles.
Anyhow, Darwin was the first to theorize into the domain of "speciation," a natural process by means of which new and distinct species could be formed.
Speciation doesn't contradict religion. It makes perfect sense. Let's say we have a hypothetical flock of birds, all the same "species." Some of them have longer thinner bills, suited to eating bugs in holes, and others have thicker bills suited to breaking through the shells of crawdads. If they crossbreed with each other then their bills aren't suited to either purpose, so the hybrids die (because they live in a hypothetical environment with no intermediate food options). OK? But the ones that keep breeding with their own kind produce viable offspring. Darwin's theory postulates that over time that flock would become 2 distinct species, because, any time the flock's members crossbred, the offspring wouldn't be viable. That's an example of one type of speciation.
What's the problem with that? It does nothing to rattle my religious faith.
OK, great, now what you're asking is why did some of the religious folks get upset about evolution? I suppose the real clash happens in 3 main cases: (1) the spark of life, (2) the origin of Man, (3) the general categories of species:
(1)
(a) When scientists try to explain that first spark of life with chemical science, without any action/agency from the LORD, it is flatly contradictory to Biblical doctrine.
(b) Furthermore, the time scale involved in the chemical explanation of the first-spark-of-life is fully inconsistent with the biblical account of the earth's age.
(c) I can see why it would be irritating to a religious person that a scientist would try to fully deprive the LORD of the credit he deserves for the miraculous thing called life. (But the pure scientist wants to use "occom's razor"..?)
(2) The Bible says that the LORD created man. (AND I believe it). Some popular Anthropological hypotheses claim that mankind shares a common ancestor with monkeys and apes. Personally, I don't need it. I'm happy with creation, and i've seen God's wrath in my own life. For that reason I wouldn't promote doctrine which encouraged a person to think of himself as the descendant of a protomonkey. (funny, I just wrote a post called the Evolution Grackels ; I had the above hypothesis in mind when I wrote it)
(3) The Bible specified that during the time of the creation, on certain days, the LORD created particular types of animals (all the fish on one day, all the birds on another, etc). I don't see any reason why speciation couldn't happen after-the-fact of creation. In fact, in the book of revelations, all kinds of die-offs are prophesied to occur.
Well anyhow that's my exampination of the contrast between evolutionary and Christian doctrine. I didn't think I'd be writing an essay.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
if this is a fraud, let's hear the evidence.
it seems that so many who claim to appreciate science don't even wait for the science to address this issue - they just reject it b/c it doesn't fit their paradigm?
oh, i get it. you have faither this evidence is false and that is a good thing?
okaaaay!
Everyone knows that asian's have sideways beavers...
788652 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 19 x 1153
I suppose the similarity of the Y chromosome across species spanning some 350 million years has escaped your notice?
If so, please peruse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome
"(a) When scientists try to explain that first spark of life with chemical science, without any action/agency from the LORD, it is flatly contradictory to Biblical doctrine." (b) Furthermore, the time scale involved in the chemical explanation of the first-spark-of-life is fully inconsistent with the biblical account of the earth's age." Yes, let us just put down the science textbooks, they don't conform to the bible. Do you really think that this helps at all? "(c) I can see why it would be irritating to a religious person that a scientist would try to fully deprive the LORD of the credit he deserves for the miraculous thing called life. (But the pure scientist wants to use "occom's razor"..?)" You're using OCCOM'S RAZOR for proof!? What the heck kind of reasoning is that? There's half a dozen anti-razors for that statement. Besides, who is to say Creation is the simpl est solution? SEriously, try explaining how he created all that matter. Hmm, that'd make it pretty darn complex, go figure. "(2) The Bible says that the LORD created man. (AND I believe it). Some popular Anthropological hypotheses claim that mankind shares a common ancestor with monkeys and apes. Personally, I don't need it. I'm happy with creation, and i've seen God's wrath in my own life. For that reason I wouldn't promote doctrine which encouraged a person to think of himself as the descendant of a protomonkey. (funny, I just wrote a post called the Evolution Grackels ; I had the above hypothesis in mind when I wrote it)" God's wrath? Hah, what is to say what is god and what is chance? Soddom and Gomora hasn't happened here yet. No one denies that NOT being descended from chimps would be far more comforting. HOwever, what's 'nice' doesn't concern science. We go for the truth, no more.
The problem is that even the evolution of dogs took a lot longer than 6000 years (most figures put it starting at around 12,000 years). And, of course, every piece of physical evidence speaks to an old earth, no global flood, and a billion year process of evolutionary change in life on earth.
The really important thing to note is that toy poodles are morphologically much more different from wolves than humans are to chimps. If you accept that NS can account for dog evolution, then it becomes pretty hard to discount the evolution of man or anything else. The morphological changes in dogs are just too radical to imagine away, and the morphological differences between chimps and people are comparatively rather tiny when you sit down and actually look at the traits (humans differ mostly in brain size, hip balancing, and that little indent in the top of your mouth). And before you come back with "but they are still dogs," that's not really any mystery either. Large scale and recent interbreeding of dogs with wolves and other dogs has kept them genetically compatible even as their traits have varied widely. Genetic incompatibility and morphological variation are not linked: many genetically incompatible speices are so similar that a layperson could never tell the two apart (for instance, abalone's speciate at an alarming rate, but their genetical compatibility is about the only thing that's changing on that scale)
You missed an option:
4. "Soft tissue" is a bit of a misnomer. As you noted, this stuff wasn't juicy, and it wasn't really even the original tissue preserved. It was fossilized impressions of tissue that allowed to learn about it's structure. It wasn't the cells themselves. It was remnants of their materials and structures. Without all the journalistic blaring of images of Jurrasic park, the "soft tissue" could be less misleadingly called "impressions and chemical components of soft tissue allowing scientists to infer what it was like"
It isn't even DNA that can contain vast differences without any functional changes. It's the proteins themselves. Many proteins have only a few amino acid sequences which actually control their overall shape, which is what makes them "work." The rest of the animo acid seuqences can vary quite a lot without causing any change in shape. In fact, proteins can actually evolve dual roles this way: a previously unimportant part changes so that it affects the shape in some way... but without altering the part of the original shape that did something: thus allowing the protein to do something new without losing its ability to play its original role. Proteins, like DNA, can be quite flexible.
Indeed, many of the key proteins in our bodies are very obviously slightly altered versions of each other (which usually happens via duplication, with the second copy not affecting anything until it changes slightly, allowing there to be both the original protein AND a simmilar but slightly different one available to play a new function)
"Actually, no, it doesn't prove that. If DNA determines what the animal will look like and how its body functions, then similar animals will have similar DNA, whether they are in any way related or not."
With DNA, there are billion ways to get the same result. There is no need for similar creatures to have similar DNA unless they recently got it from a common source, especially given that DNA, especially the non-coding sections, tends to "drift" all over the place naturally. The amount of this neutral drift implies the relative time of this common ancestry, just as we use copying errors in several copies of an ancient text to figure out which was copied from which.
"As for being able to draw family trees, you can take random strings and draw a "family tree" for them by comparing them and their differences to each other. With long enough strings, there's bound to be similar sequences, especially since DNA only has 4 possible "letters". These kind of diagrams can't be used to prove evolution, since they assume evolution as one of their prerequisites."
Unfortunately, the situation and comparisons are much more complicated than that. First of all, we're dealing with both the morphological AND the genetic trees, which can be determined indepedently of each other. The real magic comes when we compare the two... and find that they agree to an accuracy of 38 decimal places and counting. But that's not even the end of the story. The tree also has to then fit with all the fossil evidence (it does) in terms of time and space. And it has to fit with geology: Australian marsupials have to be different enough from South American ones in a way that reflects the last time they could have had any interrelation geographically frmo what we know of the movement of the continents. And they are. And THAT isn't even the end of the story... it goes on and on with this or that way of testing it against some piece of physical evidence to see if it all fits together.
Even if each and every line of indepedent evidence were wrong, how can you account for the fact that they all give basically the same answers? Error is not coordinated: it's random. Only truth provides coordination and convergence for evidence (from a single fact flows all sorts of different circumstances, all of which match back to that fact if they are all related to it).
None of this "assumes evolution" as a prerequisite. It concludes evolution because that's the only process that fits this extremely detailed pattern of constraints on what sort of evidence we'll find about this or that.
I usually get Jurassic Beavers with me home from the pub.
I wouldn't worry about it, the beavers are just jealous.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
>Yes, let us just put down the science textbooks, they
>don't conform to the bible. Do you really think that
>this helps at all?
I didn't advocate doing any such thing. It sounds like you are making a strawman, calling it "mine," and then beating it up.
>You're using OCCOM'S RAZOR for proof!? What the heck
>kind of reasoning is that? There's half a dozen
>anti-razors for that statement. Besides, who is to say
>Creation is the simpl est solution? SEriously, try
>explaining how he created all that matter. Hmm, that'd
>make it pretty darn complex, go figure. "
My claim was that the foundation of scientific principle relies an assumption like occom's razor: that the rational mind observes phenomena, forms possible explanations, develops "incisive" experiments, then those experiments are conducted, and the rational mind draws conclusions.. all that is the scientific method. without occom's razor it would be a much larger challenge to draw conclusions. For that reason, i venture, occom's razor is built into the method itself. If the razor weren't part of the method then slam-dunk conclusions couldn't be fully clinched, because there would be too many "potiential," "incidental" and "unlikely" explanations.
>God's wrath? Hah, what is to say what is god and what is
>chance? Soddom and Gomora hasn't happened here yet.
I'm happy for you, that you haven't had your own personal Soddom and Gomora. I did years in a pit of Hell; demons are real; I've seen them first hand.
>None denies that NOT being descended from chimps would
>be ofar more comforting. HOwever, what's 'nice' doesn't
>concern science. We go for the truth, no more.
Your life has not presented you with the opportunity to see that human primate evolution is false. Eventually we all get the chance? I don't know, but the parable of Jesus and the blind man comes to mind.
That's funny you mention "going for" the truth, since today I'm WEARING a shirt that says "TRUTH".
Here it is, the TRUTH: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Jurassic Beavers Challenge Current Mammal Theories
So I guess Bea Arthur having an internal struggle of, uh, mammoth proportions.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Nice Troll, sir!
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"Humourless Darwinists"
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
I think you were just the victim of a very obvious troll.
Yes, I even thought about mentioning that.
:) Any way we slice it the math rapidly approches infinite certainty.
But then it crossed by mind that coding DNA (taken 4 bases at a time) would have approximately the same entropy rate as english text. I figured it would simplify things massively to call it a wash and skip the whole issue
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I feel so badly that you have to keep on writing these posts. I'd give up at some point.
I bet those things smell horrible.
Once I made the mistake of having day-old beaver, and the only thing I can say is that it was like a dried up crusty grilled cheese sandwhich with just a hint of mayo.
I can't imagine how one from the jurassic era would taste?
Ohhh. You mean animals? I though we were talking about...
Libertas in infinitum
What are the odds you will find the exact text "50 letters is a sentence longer than this one is" in someone else's post or in some book? Possible, but very very remote.
/.ers don't tend to listen to each other, a common source is not very plausible.
The odds of finding a sentence like 'In Soviet Russia, intelligence designs YOU' are significant. Since
Trust me, I work for the government.