Right, which means you agree with me for the evidence for common ancestry and cetaceans were not specially created from nothing.
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Have you searched the entire code base to confirm that?
I have never used that file and yet the creation date is April 11, 2018 and the last access time is Feb 15, 2019. Looks like something is using that file.
You are not aware of the basic design difference in the eyes of cephalopods and humans?
Here is a quote for you. Turns out eyes are actually quite different from one another even when they serve the same function.
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Depends specifically what you mean by “common ancestry,” and what you mean exactly by “specially created from nothing.” If your concept of common ancestry requires reproduction and parent to offspring generation (that is genes inherited by sexual reproduction from one generation to the next), not necessarily.
If you mean “common ancestry” in the more general sense that windows 95 was ancestral to windows 7, then certainly, I would not believe object, and I see reasons this could well be the case.
In other words, I see two entirely different designs, each optimized, with many, many similarities, and one with what seem vestigial and unused data in the presumed descendent’s database. The idea that one is a biological, genetic descendent ofmthe other is certainly a legitimate hypothesis. But I also think it a legitimate hypothesis that one is a conceptual descendent of the other.
For instance… A genetic engineer in the future who had requisite knowledge and technology, for instance, could conceivably take the DNA from a toothed whale, sequence the DNA, re-program the database, rebuild the newly modified DNA from scratch, and create himself a cloned baleen whale.
In the most general sense, yes, the design of the new baleen whale would have “common ancestry” with the toothed whale. But if we mean literal parent to offspring generation kind of “common ancestry,” then no, clearly in this hypothetical case, I would not say there was “common ancestry.”
There could have been this kind of conceptual adjustment and evolution of the conceptual design in the mind of a designer, but this would not logically rule out special creation of the organisms in question.
Sure I am. Just as I would generously assume you are aware of the basic design difference in the wings of airplanes and helicopters.
What I’m not aware of is what difference this makes. The point remains indisputable…
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both in the biological realm, as in human engineering, there is in fact a great deal of “mixing and matching.”
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in both realms, few if any significant features are crudely “mixed and matched” without re-engineering the design, to ensure it functions perfectly for the new platform or environment.
So yes, we don’t see cephalopod eyes crudely imported into humans, or bird wings tacked onto a bat. But then, neither do we see airplane wings crudely tacked onto the top of a helicopter, or an airplane propeller directly installed on the stern of a submarine.
To acknowledge “mixing and matching” in the one realm and reject it in the other on the basis that the features have different designs seems like special pleading, given that in both realms there is substantial redesign of said features. Unless you might offer a more substantial reason why we should differentiate these cases?
This is essentially why special creation is meaningless as a hypothesis. You would have to know the mind of God to make any predictions of what one could find. Only the hypothesis of common descent has ever made actual predictions of what we would find- have there been any fossils ever predicted by the common design idea? Or would you ever expect mammals to have remnants of insect digesting genes, with those closest to Homo sapiens having the same deactivating genetic changes?
In this case, the designer was keeping the old code for small insect eating mammals as a blueprint and then upon making primates, made more errors in the code shared by some ancestral primate and then used that code to independently make humans and chimpanzees.
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So an intelligent designer with the consummate skill, vast knowledge, and tools that are totally unknown to us needed to create life over incredibly vast periods of time (if I understand where you are coming from correctly) can’t be bothered to remove genes that are broken (we have a bunch in us) or clean up His designs in general (lots of bad design out there)? He is also limited to reusing existing designs and to just do a make over rather than start from scratch. If you want to limit the intelligent designer to work as humans do then I guess you do have a point. I just can’t see how an actual intelligent designer would ever be limited in that way.
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All this is true.
But it does eliminate the claim that “transitional fossils don’t exist.”
Seems odd that it has been used as such a strong argument against evolution (by “strong” I mean “strongly iterated”); and then they are acknowledged as existing and “fitting into young earth creationism.”
Sure, God could have “made them all,” etc., but that doesn’t help answer the question of how…
God made the animals…over millions of years or in a day. Well, he made the weather in a day, but we don’t presume that God places raindrops individually in the, allowing them to fall through gravity.
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Fossils don’t come with a label that says “transitional”, is my only point here. For instance, if 1,000,000 years from now someone dug up a pet cemetery, they could separate all the large dogs from the small ones, and then fnd a medium sized dog and claim it as a “transitional” fossil, but this would be erroneous.
Even more erroneous, then, would be to use that “transitional” fossil as evidence that large dogs evolved from small ones. In this contrary-to-fact case, perhaps it is more clear to see the circular reasoning/question begging nature. One would first need to know/confirm that large dogs evolved from small ones in order to confirm (or deny) the hypothesis that the medium dog is a “transitional form.” Therefore, one can’t take the medium dog’s status as “transitional” to prove the small-to-large dog evolutionary hypothesis. In this case, the reasoning is clearly circular.
The truth or falsehood involved in labeling something as a “transitional” fossil depends on the other facts involved, and needs to be a conclusion. It may (or may not) be a conclusion that demonstrates further consistency with the rest of the theorem, but it needs to be a conclusion, not a premise.
That is my only point in assenting to the idea that there aren’t “transitional” fossils. There are just fossils, and other lines of evidence must demonstrate them to be transitional, so they can’t be used as a premise that leads to its own conclusion.
I think you’re touching on my philosophical objection. I’m interested ultimately in what is true, not which hypothesis happens to make more predictions. If we reject one hypothesis in toto simply because it doesn’t give as many predictive events as another, what happens if reality is a mixture of the two (some design, some naturally occurring evolution)? We have ruled truth out of our scientific inquiry, and have all but guaranteed we will arrive at an erroneous conclusion. I’m not interested in which hypothesis gives more predictive value, I’m interested in which is true… especially in a case where they are not mutually exclusive, and the world as it is could indeed result from a combination of both.
As for predictive value, one could still argue that the gap preceding the Cambrian explosion is consistent with (and predicable by) a design hypothesis. Not to mention the creation of life itself should predict the extreme difficulty of recreating it even by the most brilliant minds in the most favorable laboratory experiments.
The design hypothesis is certainly consistent with the rarity of de novo proteins, and i personally think it gave much better predictive value regarding the nylonase frameshift hypothesis. And I find it consistent with and predictive of the lack of any significant evolution in Lenski’s long term evolution experiment, and the fully functional nature and rapid appearance of certain biological features.
Last observation… one needs to know God’s mind only if one presumes that God is the designer in question, which ought to remain outside of a scientific inquiry.
So if there are gaps (in the fossil record I presume you mean) and they are too big (how big is ‘too big’?) then that is predicted by design. But that’s not an actual specific testable prediction unless one defines terms very explicitly and is by an large, based upon gaps in knowledge.
Here’s a recent paper on the topic which in light of new evidence perhaps ought to better be thought of one of many radiations of species throughout history:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0821-6
In what sense does design predict anything here? What mechanisms are part of the ‘design hypothesis?’
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You are intentionally misrepresenting the analysis that goes into determining phylogenetic relationships. For years it has been based on more than simply looking at skeletons and saying “This looks similar.” It involves dating of the fossils (for which there are multiple, cross-check-able methods) and comparing genomes as well. Fossils that are contemporaries and whose genomes show they are the same species would not be accidentally mistaken as ancestors of one another.
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Whether or not something is or isn’t “predictive” has no particular philosophical bearing in whether or not it is or isn’t true. And some “predictive” value, depending on the hypothesis or particular factor involved, is limited to limiting or ruling out certain conclusions, rather than determining specific predictions. We just realize that some things are consistent.
If forensics determined that a crime was committed by a “male,” would this not have predictive value in your philosophy, since it didn’t determine a particular suspect?
Or, to turn it around, how specific must predictions be to have predictive value in your system? Does evolutionary theory provide professor Lenski, for instance, specific predictions for how his e coli are going to evolve? What specific proteins they will evolve? Can you predict which organism will be the next to evolve echolocation de novo? If we discovered echolocating bears, I would not object to your saying, “evolution predicted that this kind of thing could well have happened”, I would not object that scientists had not specifically predicted it would happen in bears instead of squirrels.
When the idea was suggested that nylonase evolved de novo from a frame shift mutation, the Darwinian theory, predicated as it is on the idea that these kinds of de novo proteins must be commonplace enough to explain all of present biology, had no issue with that. Design hypothesis suggests that to develop something so particularly functional was far more likely a small beneficial modification of a pre-existing protein that already had similar function. In this case, it seems that the design hypothesis proved of greater “predictive” value, even if its prediction entailed simply ruling out erroneous paths.
What is actually studied is the transitional forms that are recorded in the fossil record. Researchers don’t identify a fossil as transitional. For example the transition of the feet of horses from four toes to a single toe is done by examining the fossil record of the various horse genera that are found. What is found is a reduction in the number of toes. Features are never analyzed in isolation but are combined with others as seen in the work done in whale origins.
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I don’t believe I am, I thought I had been clear…
I thought I noted clearly enough, these kinds of relationships may well be established by various means and methods, and to conclude that a certain fossil is “transitional” between two other organisms is a perfectly legitimate pursuit, on the methods you mention. I’m objecting only to the idea that a transitional fossil alone can be used as an argument for a certain ancestral relationship, while also depending on the fact of that ancestral relationship for it to be established as a transitional fossil.
Once it has been established as transitional on other grounds, its consistencty with the pattern may also well corroborate the larger theory. But it simply cannot be used as evidence to prove a certain transitional relationship, while at the same time depending on the reality of that transitional relationship for it to be classified as “transitional.”
My dog illustration was simply to clarify the potential for circular reasoning involved, not to suggest this is in fact the means by which all other such methods are done.
And once you do this, why can’t you label the fossil a “transitional fossil” based on these legitimate conclusions? Then you use the transitional fossil as an argument.
In order for it to be designated a transitional fossil, certain evidence needs to have led to certain conclusions, so you are misrepresenting the process. Establishing the ancestral relationship is the conclusion, not the premise. That specific conclusion can be used in other, more general arguments.
It seems like you are arguing with the idea that scientists accept the premise “organisms are biologically descended from ancestor organisms” when arguing to their conclusions about transitional fossils. What is wrong with that premise? It is a fact.
Your dog illustration was not valid because you claimed that fossils from the same burial site could be interpreted as transitional fossils of each other, when in fact, no such conclusion could ever be made because they are all contemporaries and would have been found in the same layer of rock. The designation/conclusion of transitional fossil requires the fossil under consideration to be spaced between two other fossils with significant geologic time between the ancestor form, the transitional form, and the more modern form.
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The intelligent designer is beginning to look a lot like evolution. Human designers are often able to do a total redesign, as in the case of Visual C++. It was a total rewrite; no old Legacy C++ code was used. It would be a sloppy programmer who kept commenting out code, and not eventually removing it. Legacy software is eventually abandoned.
One can use the determination of evolutionary transition, made on the basis of other factors as discussed, to reach the conclusion that a particular organism (and/or its fossil) is “transitional.”
And one can then certainly use that conclusion (that said fossil is transitional) as a premise in a different argument. But not as a premise in the same argument.
One can’t use the conclusion that a certain organism/fossil is transitional as a premise in arguing that a certain transition happened in the first place. Consider:
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Premise 1: Organism A, B, and C are dated such that they reflect chronology consistent with ancestral/transitional relationship descending from A, through B, arriving at C.
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Premise 2: Morphology is consistent with ancestral/transitional relationship descending from A, through B, arriving at C.
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Premise 3: The genetic structure of these organisms is consistent with ancestral/transitional relationship descending from A, through B, arriving at C.
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Premise 4: Organism B is a transitional organism/fossil demonstrating the ancestral/transitional relationship descending from A, through B, arriving at C.
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Conclusion: there is an ancestral/transitional relationship between organism A, B, and C with organism B (fossil B) being a transitional organism/fossil between A and C.
Premises 1, 2, and 3 are legitimate empiric observations which inductively lead to the conclusion. But premise 4 is simply a restatement of the conclusion. If the conclusion of the argument involves organism B being transitionally/ancestrally related to organism C, then one can’t use the “fact” of B’s ancestral relation with C as a premise to reach the conclusion that B is ancestrally related to C.
That “premise” as you stated it isn’t simply a fact, I’d say it is logically necessary, self-evident, and axiomatic. No one could logically deny the general statement “offspring organisms are biologically descended from ancestor organisms.” This claim is self-evident and indisputable.
But I’m talking about arguing any particular case: Once someone wants to argue (conclude) that a particular organism is descended from a particular ancestor, then no, one can’t use that “fact” to argue to a conclusion about transitional fossils. In any particular case, the statement “organism Z is descended from Y, but Y is descended from X” is essentially equivalent to saying that “Fossil Y is a transitional fossil between X and Z.” There’s no argument involved at this point, it is simply restating the same information in different words. These statements are essentially synonymous and logically equivalent.
For instance, if someone says tells me that pakicetus was a transitional organism between land animals and whales, and they then tell me that a Pakicetus fossil is a transitional fossil reflecting the transition of land animals to whales, they have not given me any new information. This is the same information expressed in two different ways.
Hence you can’t have a situation wherein the same information serves as both a premise, and the conclusion, of an argument.
Exactly! And we also note that living horses have vestigial splint bones in place of the missing toes. More evidence.
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This doesn’t make sense. If it is a fact that B has a ancestral relation with C why do you need to make a conclusion that states the same thing?
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It seems to me that once you have established that B is a transitional fossil between species A and C, “therefore a transition happened” is entailed. You don’t need a separate argument. If I establish conclusively that A killed B, I don’t need to use that as a premise for a new argument “B is dead.” It is entailed.