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Missing Link Fossil Discovered
choongiri writes "The Guardian is reporting the discovery of a missing link of evolution. From the article: "Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.""
I got your missing link right here.
I'll take any opportunity to take a frosty one all over the uncanny resemblance of Dumbya to a
monkey. Fish to land? That ain't no big deal. O Please. This is the missing link of importance.
Monkey to Leader of the Free World. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Fnord.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
First, it's entirely unreasonable to entertain questions and concerns from unscientific proponents of so-called Intelligent Design. The debate ought not revolve around disproving Intelligent Design. Giving audience to those idiots is like teaching retarded children calculus: perhaps a noble endeavor, but ultimately pointless and frustrating.
Second, from the description, it sounds like gars and other crocodile-like fish. The pathway from gills to lungs needs to be fleshed out more, but from the description, this is a very interesting fish.
Intelligent Design is wrong for so many reasons, why do so many comment on it while not understanding it?
It's like saying evolution isn't true because my dad isn't a monkey.
And we're supposed to be the intellectuals...
Intelligent Design
It's amazing what you can find if you have a preconception. Religious people do this every day of their lives, constantly finding proof of God being alive (and I of course am talking about the Christian God, that is the God that the Church of Latter Day Saints believe in, because there is no other god in existence), and yet scientists constantly dismiss their evidence, because they were found be people who had a prior belief. And yet when scientists do this, looking for evidence in a THEORY they believe in, and miraculously finding it, the scientists hold it up as the greatest achievement of mankind. They're just so hypocritical, and I am flabbergasted at why they hate God and America so much.
Amazing how similar thinking can also prove just about any other faith based religion in the world. I know exactly what the bible says about foobar and I can see it in exactly this spot!! I know exactly what confucious says about foo, and look, it happened in japan on exactly the right day! The Omega code is absolutely true, the world will end on date in the past and it will be started by this country taking oil from this country.
The sooner we realize that faith in evolution is no more scientific than those damn bible thumping fools, then the sooner we can just quit arguing and realize that our way is not the way.
You can no more observe the beginning of time, and the exact way evolution happened than you can tell whether I am wearing pants or not. You aren't here to watch me make my post, so you can never really know...yes my pants have my skin cells on them, yes they are carbon dated to have carbon in the cells exactly yea old, but you can never prove beyond a shadow of __person's__ doubt that I truly was, or was not, wearing any pants while posting.
Flame away diephobic moderators...flame away.
I actually realize the things I believe are just that.Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
For me personally, there are just too many gaps. To convince me at least, one fossil/species is not enough - this species they found could be similar in nature to the duckbill platypus. And where is the fossil evidence that the duckbill platypus evolved from another species? If macroevolution were true, then I would think there would be numerous fossils comparable to this one all over the place, but I do not see evidence of this. True there are numerous species in existence today, but we cannot identify DIRECT parent and child species of any particular species, respectively. If evolution, as they say, takes so long, there WOULD be fossils that we COULD conclusively show are directly linked to other species - without missing links - and they would be found just as easily as dinosaur fossils are.
Absolutely incorrect, sorry. ID is nothing more than creationism, and invariably young-earth creationism at that. When pressed, IDers will tell you the usual creationist nonsense, like the Earth only being 6000 years old and even that the entire planet was flooded recently. The sole purpose of ID is to disguise creationism enough to try to get it into science classes, as they realise that evolution is a direct threat to their particular brand of Christianity.
It's enormously amusing listening to IDers being interviewed and squirming to avoid the question of who this "Designer" might be. "Why yes, Jesus is my Personal Lord And Saviour, but as to who the Designer is... Oh, I couldn't possibly imagine!"
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
I like this part.... "learning how to breathe air". I want live in the water like a fish so I will try to convince my offspring and some how, couple million years from now we'll be back in the water! These so called scientists think they are being rational? So if this is true, Why aren't penises 3-4ft long by now - or at least 3-4 in longer than they were 1000-2000 years ago. Wouldn't that suggest something, God , creator pushing them/us to change because left to our own desires, how could we all want the same thing? Call evolution for what it is, a religion, because I see no hint of rational thought. And they call me crazy for believing a God. Who's crazier, because some, including myself knows God loves us and want to have a relationship with us - even though we can't see him but feel his presence or an evolutionist that thinks a bunch of fish - jut HAD to get out of the water so they can evolve? my 2c Rocky the squirrel must be a evolutionary left over.
The question is certainly valid. Just because we lack an answer doesn't mean that we automatically assume OMFG it was GOD and JESUS!
400 years ago we couldn't explain lightening either. That doesn't make lightening mystical either. Hell, we couldn't explain germ theory or even a basic rough approximation of gravity. The lack of an explanation RIGHT NOW isn't proof of anything other then that we don't know the answer yet.
That said, if you are dying for a scientific answer, string theory has thrown out some tantalizing theories involving other exotic realities crashing together. I can't do much justice explaining them. The Elegant Universe offers up some musings from theoretical physics much better then I can.
In my opinion, building up a "God of Holes" is a rather sad and pathetic way to conduct religion. Religion should be something that you take on faith that describes how you should live in this world and prepare for the next. Religion shouldn't be something that you use to plug every and any gap in your preexisting knowledge. As history has shown very succinctly, a "God of Holes" tends to find itself quickly getting amputated by science on a regular basis.
If nothing else, your "God of Holes" is likely insulting to God himself. You have a brain, use it. Maybe God did create the universe, or maybe a god created something more ancient and fundamental that goes back farther then even the big bang. If God set in forth a motion of events to lead to this precise outcome, instead of trying to crudely plug the gaps in YOUR understanding of His universe by simply declaring it mysticism, try and understand how he built the universe.
More then one theoretical physicist has taken a look at how our universe has been put together and found it so elegant and beautiful that it has left them with a belief that at the very end there exists a higher power. That sure as shit doesn't mean that every time they run into a question they can't instantly answer they throw their hands up and declare that God did it. Instead, they press forward and trying and truly understand God's universe and its deepest inner working.
Ironically enough, if God did create the universe, a theoretical physicist is probably much closer to understanding the mind of God then your average bible thumping nut job whose eyes bleed every time evolution is mentioned. While the bible thumping nut job runs around like an idiot declaring the world a couple thousand years old and turning their mind off completely to understanding the universe, a physicist is carefully studying the most basic rules and laws of the universe. In a sense, the physicist is studying God's work and perhaps gaining some insight into the mind of God.
You do have beliefs, even if you dont think you do, that's your belief that you don't have a belief. Stop being so childish.
:o it must be obsolete!), and I can safely say that I have a sturdy enough grasp of the english language to know that your tone of speaking is arrogant and also just uninformed (I doubt you could point out any of these 'inconsistencies' which you assume to exist, without actually reading or understanding the bible/history/jewish culture). I love all this liberal/PC/free speech that people bandy about these days, because it allows me to point out to people that Christians are entitled to their own beliefs too, and also it's quite funny how people get so defensive and blatantly dont e
I dont just believe in God because of the odds, though I dont just believe in Him because I think it's a nice idea either. I can see the evidence and likelihoods, and know that there could be alternative explanations, but those explanations seem poor to me. You dont seem to know anything about what constitutes an offense that can send you to hell (which is almost exclusively a Christian thing, though hey if God isn't the God I believe in, then maybe he will send me to his hell for believing in the Christian God - but most other 'gods' seem to just want you to either be a nice person, or sacrifice your children, so either I'll probably count as a nice person, or I'll go to hell because I dont want to murder people.. hmm), so you should maybe try a little research before talking about it. Also, why else should I believe something is likely to be true, other than the odds and evidence point towards it being so? I don't subsrcribe to the notion of 'blind faith'.
Why exactly don't you think I have a grasp of english? I dont actually feel the need to have an 'argument' for my beliefs, since obviously when it comes to belief, arguments are usually pointless. It appears to be you that doesnt understand english - being a sceptic has nothing at all to do with your religious beliefs, and you can be sceptical of anything. I have considered why I believe what I believe, and just because I have 'ways' to be set in doesnt mean that I dont assess those ways also. I accept evidence from the world around me, and also have read the bible completely, dont know any 'inconsistencies' that are not explained from a lack of actually knowing the bible. What am I denying that I see right in front of me?
Also I like your little "dear" and "my friend" bollocks, very patronising, yet somehow I dont feel that things aren't looking good for me - what exactly isn't "good" about having faith, and what things are going to be good if I decide that I'm just a clever little monkey who has no aim in life but to further science, or get rich/have a family/whatever. Life is meaningless if all there is to it is what we see. If there is no higher purpose or power, then life has no value other than what we assign to it. You may choose to assign a high value to the little curious mechanism of life that came to be on our planet, but personally, if there's no God then what I believe doesn't matter, and you should just let me believe it, unless you have some kind of altruistic purpose to getting me to believe that evolution is the basis of our existence (though science has yet to come up with an explanation on how to spontaneously create life). Do you just accept that we 'are', and that is all there is to it? If so, why are you so interested in evolution, and why dont you seem to be interested in why matter even exists.
"You don't exactly have a strong enough grasp of the english language to debate this fairly" - my mind still boggles as to why you think this, especially considering you didnt pick up on the fact that I spelled sceptical wrong (and I had my inklings, but just checked just now). I used to read a lot of books, not even including having read the bible (which, yes, OMGZ0RZ it was written by more than one person, in fact many people across many generations, kind of like a history book! and it's old!!
which is totally what she said