Well sure, not a common designer of the cephalopod and vertebrate eyes, but a common designer of the cephalopod and vertebrate cilia and Hox genes. So, um, clearly some of it was parceled out.
Further evidence that the smartest — as well as the most useful and important — people on the planet are barstaff. If it weren’t for them, the fight in the War on Liver would be much harder. Cretinistias don’t stand a chance!
The cretinistias should be redesigned as something useful, like toilet paper.
I understand that we share 50% of our genes with bananas, so Ray Comfort must’ve got the full complement of banana genes from his mother, & from his father to, making him totally bananas.
Rich Woodssays
By how much would I be willing to suck up to the water-into-wine guy if it cut down on my bar tab?
Not much.
daniellavinesays
Is it just me or is Jesus and Mo much less funny than the creationists it’s trying to parody?
Dick the Damnedsays
Daniel, i don’t find creationists at all funny. People like banana boy Ray Comfort are really evil, trying to subvert science, for their own ends. Now you might argue that, if he sincerely believes his religious nonsense, then that makes him foolish rather than evil. Okay, i’m good with that, too. He’s one or the other, or just as likely, both.
Speaking as an engineer, creationists show a poor understanding of engineering, also. Engineers re-use designs not because that is in any sense optimal to the thing designed, but because, being human, we are cost-constrained. If I had omniscience and omnipotence, each new design would be tailored to its end, with no need at all for re-use of work I had previously done.
On the other hand, I might still sign my work.
fernandosays
Foolish ideas can be quite evil, because these ideas are malevolent, in a certain way, for some group of people or to all the people in general, and at the same time hinder the human and scientific advancement of our society:
Lying about scientific facts: creationists.
Women should submit to their husbands, because women are inferior: religious books.
Some races are inferior, and must be enslaved/killed: a bunch of old cultures and tyranic states.
People like Ray Confort are foolish and evil, because they try to widespread ignorance and promote the kind of social behavior of bronze age, theocratic, societies.
mobiussays
Ah, good. I was sure this would pop up on Pharyngula.
daniellavinesays
Dick the Damned@7:
Come on, I laughed my ass off when I first heard the banana argument. Don’t think I’ve ever actually LOLed at a Jesus and Mo cartoon though.
Whatever, I shouldn’t be posting just to talk trash about a cartoon I don’t like. Sorry to be an asshole.
Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :)says
Now you might argue that, if he sincerely believes his religious nonsense, then that makes him foolish rather than evil.
This is a false dichotomy.
allan eslersays
all their are remarks are jokes that’s all the can come up with.
WhiteHatLurkersays
It’s my understanding that the phylogenetic “tree of life” isn’t evidence in and of itself. It’s a representation of the lineages. It is derived from the actual evidence.
Technological artifacts, thousands of years old, that cannot be replicated with modern means.
Unfossilized tyrannosaurus rex tissue
Other unfossilzed dinosaur tissue
My Point : Atheists like to prop up their egos and act like the only intellectuals on the planet, but the fact remains that darwinism as we know it has been debunked and major universities are trying to hide evidence of design, even going as far as to fire the professor that discovers it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
My Point : Atheists like to prop up their egos and act like the only intellectuals on the planet, but the fact remains that darwinism as we know it has been debunked and major universities are trying to hide evidence of design, even going as far as to fire the professor that discovers it.
Gee, a lot of scientific assertions, and not one shred of scientific evidence. Why am I not believing a word you say?
Ricky, all of these are addressed in great detail at TalkOrigins and elsewhere. A depressingly large number of the answers come down to “creationists lie a lot.” What’s really telling is that none of the answers have good counteranswers on the creationist sites. That alone should be enough to give you pause. Your second assertion, that professors who disagree are persecuted, is indistinguishable from professors who are wrong and lie a lot being persecuted until such time as you can establish that your heroes are actually telling the truth. I spent a good many years looking for this high quality science that rebukes the explanations of the evolutionary biologists (not to mention the paleontologists, archeologists, historians, and geologists) and I never found it. Why don’t you link to it if you’ve got it?
sqlrobsays
Precambrian explosion of life
Several millions of years.
Lack of transitional forms
They’re ALL transitional. Plus predicted forms have been found where predicted.
Deteriorating gene sequences
Define please
Irreducable complexity
Mind giving an example of one that hasn’t been shot down? (Hint: flagella and eye have been demolished, so bring something new)
Fine tuning of the universe
This hole was designed to fit me perfectly said the puddle.
Evidence for the coexistence of humans/dinosaurs
Flintstones was not a documentary
Technological artifacts, thousands of years old, that cannot be replicated with modern means.
my best friend’s sister makes $60 an hour on the laptop. She has been fired from work for 8 months but last month her pay check was $20914 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read more on this site http://www.Green37.com
John Moralessays
[OT]
“Ehthel Dennis” the spammer, upon whose lap was your best friend’s sister on top of? :)
(You should spam in religious/creationist sites, if you want credulity)
And there are over a million such papers, backing evolution directly and indirectly. At best, an ignored handful for ID.
Loftysays
Ricky Moore, does doing a Gish Gallop lead to shortness of breath? Enquiring minds wish to know.
vaiytsays
the fact remains that darwinism as we know it has been debunked and major universities are trying to hide evidence of design, even going as far as to fire the professor that discovers it.
Look, if you’re going to lie this blatantly, why don’t you go the whole hog and say Jesus appeared to you riding a dinosaur and gave you the refutation to the Theory of Evolution?
Stacysays
Looks like Brave Sir Ricky ran away.
(In other “So What Else is New News,” he’s so full of Christian love–or something–he’s got racist pics on his Facebook page.)
sc_770d159609e0f8deaa72849e3731a29dsays
major universities are trying to hide evidence of design, even going as far as to fire the professor that discovers it.
Name/names of the professor[s], please, Mr Moore.
lpetrichsays
That sharing of genes with bananas seems like an urban legend.
I say that because there hasn’t been that much genetic work on the banana plant as compared to some others, like Arabidopsis thaliana. So has anyone tried a human – Arabidopsis comparison?
But I suspect that some geneticists may have tried finding ancestral mammalian genes, ancestral vertebrate genes, ancestral metazoan genes, ancestral fungus genes, etc. from the abundance of sequenced genomes. So one could work from there.
wcorvisays
It struck me a while back that the problem with any pseudoscience is that it is a sterile dead end. This is the one characteristic of all of it, that distinguishes it from ‘real’ science. In science, discoveries are based on previous work, and lead to new ideas. After realizing that sounds can be transmitted over radio waves, it isn’t a huge step to think of images, too.
But what has ‘irreducible complexity’ led to? What has the idea that dinosaurs and humans lived together led to? What, for that matter, has ‘god made bananas to fit perfectly in our hands’ led to? If all memory of science disappeared, we’d soon be living in caves. If all memory of religion disappeared, no one would notice.
=8)-DXsays
@rturpin #8
If I had omniscience and omnipotence, each new design would be tailored to its end, with no need at all for re-use of work I had previously done.
JUST THINK, what that would mean for biology. We could have organisms with individually different internal cell structures, we could have multiple (even infinite) types of DNA, we could have silicon-based lifeforms, gaslike biosystems in our atmosphere, shit even an intelligent Gaia Earth!
Being such a creator is every sci-fi enthusiasts wet dream, yet YHWH managed to come up with design = same old, same old? Botch that.
=8)-DXsays
@lpetrich
That sharing of genes with bananas seems like an urban legend.
Or gene precursors. One shouldn’t shy away from common ancestry just because of inaccurate knowledge about actual specific common DNA traits. I’m cousin to the banana, just as equally as to the fly, cabbage or many protozoa. You weren’t saying that, but enthusiastic promotion of the fact of the common ancestry of life is a more important an idea in some ways, than exact measures of genetic commonality.
lpetrichsays
I should have pointed out that I was responding to:
Dick the Damned, #4: “I understand that we share 50% of our genes with bananas”
What is the source? As they say in Wikipedia, citation needed.
There hasn’t been much work on the genetics of bananas, some some biologist would likely state human – Arabidopsis similarity, since there’s been much more genetics work on Arabidopsis.
David Marjanovićsays
Precambrian explosion of life
No such thing. I think you mean the so-called Cambrian Explosion, which lasted fifty million years.
I suspect that there’s common DNA for energy metabolism. Don’t we share 30% of our DNA with yeast? Speaking of energy metabolism, why do we all use similar pathways? Why do the haeme in haemoglobin and the haeme in chlorophyll have almost the same structure but differ in which positive ion they hold? It’s as if they are variations of the same molecule.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
It’s as if they are variations of the same molecule.
Typical of evolution. Recycle old gene in new ways.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Dang, misspoke.
Typical of evolution. Duplicate and then recycle old genes in new ways.
*Reading The Logic of Chance: The Nature adn Origin of Biological Evolution …by E. V. Koonin.
Who Caressays
@Rturpin(#8): You forgot the other half of that argument. That those ‘intelligent designs’ are so haphazard that if a human engineer would be design that way they’d never get work.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
It’s been ~24 hours since the fuckwitted evidencelss bullshitter left a cow-gull turd and ran off. What is it about such folks, that they have to run off, showing conclusive evidence they are liars and bullshitters, rather than stopping in for an evidential debate….One would think they know they have lost before posting their bullshit….
Rev. BigDumbChimpsays
Evidence of the co existence of .dinosaurs and humans?
Hahahahahahaha
Did Eric Hovind send you here?
vaiytsays
What’s funny about Jesus and Mo is that such an utterly straightforward, humorless, soapboxy comic can generate so much outrage on the religiots.
Rey Foxsays
We have whole trees of transitional forms! Name a transition, and I’ll show you.
I just got this weird mental image of David as a Seuss character, or maybe the Willy Wonka of taxonomy.
anchorsays
Barmaid always kicks ass. Yes, agree with Lynna #3: my hero too!
anchorsays
This is a great one: they face away from the barmaid of reality.
sqlrobsays
@Nerd:
And not only that. Let’s for the sake of argument assume every single one of his statements are true and supported. (HAHAHHA. Yeah, right)
How does it in any way support the Abrahamic god?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
How does it in any way support the Abrahamic god?
Considering that the Designer could be an advanced alien species, it doesn’t. Just in their minds though, designer = a deity = Yahweh their deity.
theignoredsays
Looks like Ken Ham has approved Comfort’s latest movie.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Looks like Ken Ham has approved Comfort’s latest movie.
Gee, checking the betting, nobody went for Hamikins criticizing the movie. *Gives everybody their money back*
Thumper; Atheist matesays
Precambrian explosion of life
Is evidence against evolution how…?
Lack of transitional forms
We have many transitional forms. Your ignorance is not evidence of design.
Deteriorating gene sequences
What are you talking about? Deteriorating by what measure?
Irreducable complexity
Name one example. [I bet he goes for the bacterial flagellar, which should be fun :)]
Fine tuning of the universe
Did it ever occurr to you that we are fine-tuned to the universe, rather than vice versa? We evolved here, so obviously it’s perfect for us to live in because we are adapted to live in it! Seriously, think it through for a second. And, quite apart from the fact you have got your premise and your conclusion all mixed up, the fact you think the entire universe is fine-tuned just so you can exist is staggeringly arrogant and reeks of unjustified self-importance.
Evidence for the coexistence of humans/dinosaurs
What evidence? Present some.
Technological artifacts, thousands of years old, that cannot be replicated with modern means.
Such as…?
Also, how is that evidence of design? Evidence of alien contact I could take, even if I was laughing at it, but why design? This is entirely illogical.
Unfossilized tyrannosaurus rex tissue
Other unfossilzed dinosaur tissue
I don’t understand why you differentiate between T. rex and other dinosaurs (are they special and therefore more supportive of design?) so I’ve just lumped these in together. Two things:
– What do you mean unfossilised dinosaur tissue? If it didn’t fossilise it would have decomposed. So where is it? How was it preserved? What on earth are you talking about?
– Are you suggesting that the presence of this unfossilised and yet not-decomposed dinosaur tissue is indicative of dinosaurs still walking the planet today? Because that would be the obvious conclusion to draw from such evidence, if indeed such evidence exists, but the implausibility of such a conclusion should lead you to question the evidence.
My Point : Atheists like to prop up their egos and act like the only intellectuals on the planet, but the fact remains that darwinism as we know it has been debunked and major universities are trying to hide evidence of design, even going as far as to fire the professor that discovers it.
Debunked how? Evidence please, this should be entertaining. As for your conspiracy theory, please explain what advantage “major universities” (which ones in particular, by the way?) would have in preserving the credibility of a debunked hypothesis? Which professor discovered evidence of design, when was he fired, who fired him, and what precisely was his evidence?
Matt Gerranssays
The ChristianNews.com article says “Even when Comfort personally interviews influential evolutionists from major universities in the film (such as well-known atheist PZ Myers), they are unable to satisfyingly answer Comfort’s prodding questions.”
What do you mean unfossilised dinosaur tissue? If it didn’t fossilise it would have decomposed. So where is it? How was it preserved? What on earth are you talking about?
He’s talking about Mary Schweitzer‘s findings, as misinterpreted by idiot creationists. The most important point to bring up when idiot creationists blather on about “unfossilized dinosaur tissue” is that Mary Schweitzer — who has been doing all of the research that idiot creationists quote-mine and parasitize — is not a YEC creationist, and does not conclude that her findings have anything to do with the age of the earth or the time when dinosaurs lived. She accepts and relies on the conventional dating systems that were and are used to date the formations in which the dinosaurs she has worked on were found in.
What appears to be the case is that the bones under discussion were very well preserved; the tissues in the bones were at least partially not permineralized, and, as David Marjanović wrote above, the proteins in the tissues inside the bones were crosslinked; that is, they underwent a chemical reaction such that they were in a stable state which would not decay further.
One problem for laypeople is that “fossilized” is not a well-defined term, and isn’t really relevant to dating fossils. To cite Josh the Geologist:
Regarding your question about work being conducted on the post-burial degredation rates of the organic fraction of vertebrate bone and subsequent replacement rates by minerals via groundwater solutions, some research has been and is being done on this. But for vertebrates certainly this aspect of the science of taphonomy is really still in its infancy. There just aren’t that many people who focus on this kind of stuff (I’m far less familiar with what folks who work on invertebrate fossils are up to, but I can tell you very little research has popped up on my radar).
Since paleontology focuses on what ancient life was like *while that life was alive,* we’re far more interested in using taphonomy to help answer questions regarding the environment in which an animal lived than about what happened to it after it was dead and buried. So, because folks are trying to use taphonomic information to infer aspects of paleoenvironment, they’re much more often trying to understand what various environmental processes do to (mostly the outside of) a bone or shell or whatever *before* the element in question undergoes final burial.
You’re asking about what is going on *after* final burial and we know far less about this because we CARE far less about this. As I stated in other posts, the degree of permineralization in a bone or shell is completely irrelevant to whether or not we think of it as a ‘fossil'(the process of permineralization is a continuum, sure, but it does *not* ever result in a yes or no as to whether something is or isn’t a fossil) and is actually irrelevant to most of the questions we try to answer *using* fossils. In general, broad declarative statements that minerals replace the original material in bones or shells over millions of years (or hundreds of thousands, or whatever) don’t really reflect the literature nor how paleontology currently looks at fossils or the permineralization process.
BUT, that all being said, the level of detail in which we currently understand rates of perminalization DOES NOT AFFECT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE AGE OF A FOSSIL BECAUSE WE DO NOT DATE FOSSILS USING PERMINALIZATION. Well, perhaps some people out there somewhere do, but if so, they’re foolish and I’ll tell them that. I’m making this point because I presume you’re actually more interested in questions regarding the age of fossils than you are in discussing the nuances of the precipitation of calcite crystals out of groundwater.
The fact that the study of permineralization is currently rather far behind some other aspects of paleontology CANNOT BE USED (if you’re being honest) to say– “SEE?! They don’t know how old the earth is! Scientists don’t know anything! He even just admitted they don’t understand fossilization rates well!” –because we simply *don’t use* permineralization to date fossils. Its like if Ford had trouble with side airbags and someone said, “See! Ford doesn’t know anything about Electronic Fuel Injection systems! They can’t get those side airbags to deploy properly at all! And they have the audacity to try and tell us their EFI system increases gas mileage by 13mpg? Ridiculous!”
(and yes, I intentionally used the foolish phrase ‘fossilization rates’ above instead of properly saying perminealization because that is probably exactly how I would be misquoted).
tl;dr: Do not let creationists bullshit you about “unfossilized”/”soft” dinosaur tissue.
Tethyssays
The links are borked Owlmirror.
Permineralization is interesting and not very well studied. I really would like to know what the half life of calcium is, and how long it takes for calcium carbonate to be completely replaced by silica.
I think the fundies ARE trying to find/show any error at all, so they can “prove” that scientists don’t know what they are doing. To use the auto-design comparison, they are trying to show that Ford engineers are crappy. They don’t separate their criticism into different fields, because they really have no idea what’s going on.
See, a lot of fundies think that science is like religion:
In religious matters, if I am trying to disprove the existence of God, I just need to find one little place where God is not, and the omnipresent aspect goes up in a whiff of logic.They insist that the Bible must be inerrant. If one preacher is faking miracles, all miracles become suspect. Well, they don’t see it quite that way, but they dimly realize that one flaw can destroy the whole religion—-it’s irreducibly complex—if God isn’t inspiring you, what the Hell is? It’s a black-and-white-no-grey-matter, all-or-nothing game. You are either a Christian or you are not, you convert instantly and entirely, you go to Heaven or to Hell. It’s how conservatives “think”.
So they think science is like that. If they can find one little flaw, the whole of science comes crashing down in a big black pile, and their truth rises up, white and shining. They don’t realize that science advances by testing everything for errors, by learning from mistakes, and can change its mind.
So, yeah, if there is some soft tissue in dino bones, everything we know about dinos just goes out the window, along with the reputations of everyone involved. Even if nobody has ever said that there can’t be soft tissue there, and even if it wasn’t soft tissue, and even if the fundies got all their “facts” from the Disco ‘Tute. They know science is wrong, and they live in expectation of proof of that.
Amphioxsays
Precambrian explosion of life
That explosion was an adaptive radiation. Adaptive radiations are one of the standard patterns for evolutionary change.
Unfossilized tyrannosaurus rex tissue
Unmentioned here is that this “unfossilized” T. rex tissue (collagen) was, upon recovery, sequenced. And the sequence is 100% consistent with the hypothesized evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds.
Technological artifacts, thousands of years old, that cannot be replicated with modern means.
Humans are smart. Humans from a thousand years ago are just as smart as humans today. That they figured out some tricks that modern humans haven’t is hardly surprising.
You also failed to consider all the technological artifacts, very new, that cannot be replicated by ancient means.
David Marjanovićsays
One problem for laypeople is that “fossilized” is not a well-defined term
Indeed. The difference between a fossil and a subfossil is, by definition, just its age: if some part of an organism is older than 10,000 years, it’s a fossil.
…Yes, that means that most YECs deny the existence of fossils altogether. It also means that very different-looking things are called fossils – fresh-looking cave bear bones with air in the spongy part of the bone just as well as things that are really hard to distinguish from the rock around and in them.
I really would like to know what the half life of calcium is, and how long it takes for calcium carbonate to be completely replaced by silica.
…That’s almost never how it works. Bone is calcium phosphate* and usually remains calcium phosphate after 500 million years, and eggshell is calcium carbonate and remains calcium carbonate after 200 million years**. Two things usually happen: the tiny crystals dissolve and reform as bigger crystals, and the hollow spaces (marrow cavities, blood vessel canals, spaces for bone cells, yadda yadda) are filled in by minerals that precipitate from groundwater. Opalized bones – where the infilling and perhaps some replacement was done by silica – are very rare.
Silicified wood, BTW, isn’t wood that was replaced by silica either (as people used to think); it’s wood that had its empty spaces filled with silica. If you put it in hydrofluoric acid, so that the silica turns into water and the unpleasant gas SiF4, you get the original cell walls out.
* With impurities.
** Hard eggshells are a pretty recent innovation; even today the eggs of mammals (where applicable) and lepidosaurs (except geckos) only have a soft, organic shell.
David Marjanovićsays
(Conodonts are calcium phosphate, too.)
Tethyssays
I was thinking of marine organisms like coral, and specifically about our local 2.1 byo stromatolites. I believe they were calcite ( the coral) and and calcium carbonate when living?
They are now jasper (marine chert?) with various forms of iron. I found a nice specimin just last Saturday to add to my collection. Even when the fossils retain the white color, they are nearly pure SiO(2).
I can also find cambrian fossil bacterial mats that are quartz in alternating reddish and milky indistinct bands, though they are nowhere near as well preserved as the much older stromatolites.
North Dakota has fossilized spruce trees and fragments all over the place, but I was under the impression that they were permineralized due to glacial meltwater. They look just like wood, no agate or opal. I wish I had the proper equipment and hydroflouric acid. It would be cool to unfossilize a piece.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
I wish I had the proper equipment and hydrofluoric acid. It would be cool to unfossilize a piece.
As someone who has worked with hydrofluoric acid, due care and a good fume hood is absolutely required. Hydrofluoric acid is one of those poisons that may not kill you immediately, but it will work on your bones and teeth, changing calcium hydroxyphosphate to calcium fluorophosphate, which weakens the bones and teeth. The dentists use fluoride treatment to strengthen the enamel an prevent tooth decay. Like a lot of pharmaceuticals, dose is everything.
Tethyssays
I have worked with dilute hydroflouric gel for etching porcelain veneers, so I am aware that proper ventilation is important. I used to get upset on a regular basis by my co-workers touching the gel or doing the etching process at their bench.
I am curious now though, what would you use to contain the hf and the piece of petrified wood that would resist the acid? If it dissolves silica, it would dissolve glass.
Common designer. Sheez, Darwinists.
Well sure, not a common designer of the cephalopod and vertebrate eyes, but a common designer of the cephalopod and vertebrate cilia and Hox genes. So, um, clearly some of it was parceled out.
Is that so hard to believe?
Glen DAvidson
Further evidence that the smartest — as well as the most useful and important — people on the planet are barstaff. If it weren’t for them, the fight in the War on Liver would be much harder. Cretinistias don’t stand a chance!
The cretinistias should be redesigned as something useful, like toilet paper.
Barmaid is my hero.
PZ is only a cousin to a banana.
I understand that we share 50% of our genes with bananas, so Ray Comfort must’ve got the full complement of banana genes from his mother, & from his father to, making him totally bananas.
By how much would I be willing to suck up to the water-into-wine guy if it cut down on my bar tab?
Not much.
Is it just me or is Jesus and Mo much less funny than the creationists it’s trying to parody?
Daniel, i don’t find creationists at all funny. People like banana boy Ray Comfort are really evil, trying to subvert science, for their own ends. Now you might argue that, if he sincerely believes his religious nonsense, then that makes him foolish rather than evil. Okay, i’m good with that, too. He’s one or the other, or just as likely, both.
Speaking as an engineer, creationists show a poor understanding of engineering, also. Engineers re-use designs not because that is in any sense optimal to the thing designed, but because, being human, we are cost-constrained. If I had omniscience and omnipotence, each new design would be tailored to its end, with no need at all for re-use of work I had previously done.
On the other hand, I might still sign my work.
Foolish ideas can be quite evil, because these ideas are malevolent, in a certain way, for some group of people or to all the people in general, and at the same time hinder the human and scientific advancement of our society:
Lying about scientific facts: creationists.
Women should submit to their husbands, because women are inferior: religious books.
Some races are inferior, and must be enslaved/killed: a bunch of old cultures and tyranic states.
People like Ray Confort are foolish and evil, because they try to widespread ignorance and promote the kind of social behavior of bronze age, theocratic, societies.
Ah, good. I was sure this would pop up on Pharyngula.
Dick the Damned@7:
Come on, I laughed my ass off when I first heard the banana argument. Don’t think I’ve ever actually LOLed at a Jesus and Mo cartoon though.
Whatever, I shouldn’t be posting just to talk trash about a cartoon I don’t like. Sorry to be an asshole.
This is a false dichotomy.
all their are remarks are jokes that’s all the can come up with.
It’s my understanding that the phylogenetic “tree of life” isn’t evidence in and of itself. It’s a representation of the lineages. It is derived from the actual evidence.
What about :
Precambrian explosion of life
Lack of transitional forms
Deteriorating gene sequences
Irreducable complexity
Fine tuning of the universe
Evidence for the coexistence of humans/dinosaurs
Technological artifacts, thousands of years old, that cannot be replicated with modern means.
Unfossilized tyrannosaurus rex tissue
Other unfossilzed dinosaur tissue
My Point : Atheists like to prop up their egos and act like the only intellectuals on the planet, but the fact remains that darwinism as we know it has been debunked and major universities are trying to hide evidence of design, even going as far as to fire the professor that discovers it.
Gee, a lot of scientific assertions, and not one shred of scientific evidence. Why am I not believing a word you say?
Ricky, all of these are addressed in great detail at TalkOrigins and elsewhere. A depressingly large number of the answers come down to “creationists lie a lot.” What’s really telling is that none of the answers have good counteranswers on the creationist sites. That alone should be enough to give you pause. Your second assertion, that professors who disagree are persecuted, is indistinguishable from professors who are wrong and lie a lot being persecuted until such time as you can establish that your heroes are actually telling the truth. I spent a good many years looking for this high quality science that rebukes the explanations of the evolutionary biologists (not to mention the paleontologists, archeologists, historians, and geologists) and I never found it. Why don’t you link to it if you’ve got it?
Several millions of years.
They’re ALL transitional. Plus predicted forms have been found where predicted.
Define please
Mind giving an example of one that hasn’t been shot down? (Hint: flagella and eye have been demolished, so bring something new)
This hole was designed to fit me perfectly said the puddle.
Flintstones was not a documentary
Neither is Doctor Who
Citation needed.
as Louis said I am inspired that a person able to get paid $8300 in a few weeks on the internet. did you look at this webpage http://www.Green37.com
my best friend’s sister makes $60 an hour on the laptop. She has been fired from work for 8 months but last month her pay check was $20914 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read more on this site http://www.Green37.com
[OT]
“Ehthel Dennis” the spammer, upon whose lap was your best friend’s sister on top of? :)
(You should spam in religious/creationist sites, if you want credulity)
Ricky Moore, this is what I mean by scientific evidence. Not inane religious blather, but papers from the peer reviewed scientific literature.
The report of mutation in e-coli allowing it feed on citrate
The genome analysis of the history of said mutation.
Both support evolution, and not design by imaginary deities.
And there are over a million such papers, backing evolution directly and indirectly. At best, an ignored handful for ID.
Ricky Moore, does doing a Gish Gallop lead to shortness of breath? Enquiring minds wish to know.
Look, if you’re going to lie this blatantly, why don’t you go the whole hog and say Jesus appeared to you riding a dinosaur and gave you the refutation to the Theory of Evolution?
Looks like Brave Sir Ricky ran away.
(In other “So What Else is New News,” he’s so full of Christian love–or something–he’s got racist pics on his Facebook page.)
Name/names of the professor[s], please, Mr Moore.
That sharing of genes with bananas seems like an urban legend.
I say that because there hasn’t been that much genetic work on the banana plant as compared to some others, like Arabidopsis thaliana. So has anyone tried a human – Arabidopsis comparison?
But I suspect that some geneticists may have tried finding ancestral mammalian genes, ancestral vertebrate genes, ancestral metazoan genes, ancestral fungus genes, etc. from the abundance of sequenced genomes. So one could work from there.
It struck me a while back that the problem with any pseudoscience is that it is a sterile dead end. This is the one characteristic of all of it, that distinguishes it from ‘real’ science. In science, discoveries are based on previous work, and lead to new ideas. After realizing that sounds can be transmitted over radio waves, it isn’t a huge step to think of images, too.
But what has ‘irreducible complexity’ led to? What has the idea that dinosaurs and humans lived together led to? What, for that matter, has ‘god made bananas to fit perfectly in our hands’ led to? If all memory of science disappeared, we’d soon be living in caves. If all memory of religion disappeared, no one would notice.
@rturpin #8
JUST THINK, what that would mean for biology. We could have organisms with individually different internal cell structures, we could have multiple (even infinite) types of DNA, we could have silicon-based lifeforms, gaslike biosystems in our atmosphere, shit even an intelligent Gaia Earth!
Being such a creator is every sci-fi enthusiasts wet dream, yet YHWH managed to come up with design = same old, same old? Botch that.
@lpetrich
Or gene precursors. One shouldn’t shy away from common ancestry just because of inaccurate knowledge about actual specific common DNA traits. I’m cousin to the banana, just as equally as to the fly, cabbage or many protozoa. You weren’t saying that, but enthusiastic promotion of the fact of the common ancestry of life is a more important an idea in some ways, than exact measures of genetic commonality.
I should have pointed out that I was responding to:
Dick the Damned, #4: “I understand that we share 50% of our genes with bananas”
What is the source? As they say in Wikipedia, citation needed.
There hasn’t been much work on the genetics of bananas, some some biologist would likely state human – Arabidopsis similarity, since there’s been much more genetics work on Arabidopsis.
No such thing. I think you mean the so-called Cambrian Explosion, which lasted fifty million years.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
We have whole trees of transitional forms! Name a transition, and I’ll show you.
No such thing. How would you even measure “better” or “worse”?
Evolves much the same way an arch is built.
(BTW, “irreducable” would be pronounced with “duke” in the middle. There’s a reason it’s spelled irreducible.)
No such thing. Vary two parameters at the same time, and 21 % of the resulting simulated universes are habitable.
Like what?
Like what, for example?
Oh, you misunderstand. The protein is thoroughly crosslinked, and the DNA is all gone.
Now, will you come back, or shall I taunt you again?
I suspect that there’s common DNA for energy metabolism. Don’t we share 30% of our DNA with yeast? Speaking of energy metabolism, why do we all use similar pathways? Why do the haeme in haemoglobin and the haeme in chlorophyll have almost the same structure but differ in which positive ion they hold? It’s as if they are variations of the same molecule.
Typical of evolution. Recycle old gene in new ways.
Dang, misspoke.
*Reading The Logic of Chance: The Nature adn Origin of Biological Evolution …by E. V. Koonin.
@Rturpin(#8): You forgot the other half of that argument. That those ‘intelligent designs’ are so haphazard that if a human engineer would be design that way they’d never get work.
It’s been ~24 hours since the fuckwitted evidencelss bullshitter left a cow-gull turd and ran off. What is it about such folks, that they have to run off, showing conclusive evidence they are liars and bullshitters, rather than stopping in for an evidential debate….One would think they know they have lost before posting their bullshit….
Evidence of the co existence of .dinosaurs and humans?
Hahahahahahaha
Did Eric Hovind send you here?
What’s funny about Jesus and Mo is that such an utterly straightforward, humorless, soapboxy comic can generate so much outrage on the religiots.
I just got this weird mental image of David as a Seuss character, or maybe the Willy Wonka of taxonomy.
Barmaid always kicks ass. Yes, agree with Lynna #3: my hero too!
This is a great one: they face away from the barmaid of reality.
@Nerd:
And not only that. Let’s for the sake of argument assume every single one of his statements are true and supported. (HAHAHHA. Yeah, right)
How does it in any way support the Abrahamic god?
Considering that the Designer could be an advanced alien species, it doesn’t. Just in their minds though, designer = a deity = Yahweh their deity.
Looks like Ken Ham has approved Comfort’s latest movie.
Gee, checking the betting, nobody went for Hamikins criticizing the movie. *Gives everybody their money back*
Is evidence against evolution how…?
We have many transitional forms. Your ignorance is not evidence of design.
What are you talking about? Deteriorating by what measure?
Name one example. [I bet he goes for the bacterial flagellar, which should be fun :)]
Did it ever occurr to you that we are fine-tuned to the universe, rather than vice versa? We evolved here, so obviously it’s perfect for us to live in because we are adapted to live in it! Seriously, think it through for a second. And, quite apart from the fact you have got your premise and your conclusion all mixed up, the fact you think the entire universe is fine-tuned just so you can exist is staggeringly arrogant and reeks of unjustified self-importance.
What evidence? Present some.
Such as…?
Also, how is that evidence of design? Evidence of alien contact I could take, even if I was laughing at it, but why design? This is entirely illogical.
I don’t understand why you differentiate between T. rex and other dinosaurs (are they special and therefore more supportive of design?) so I’ve just lumped these in together. Two things:
– What do you mean unfossilised dinosaur tissue? If it didn’t fossilise it would have decomposed. So where is it? How was it preserved? What on earth are you talking about?
– Are you suggesting that the presence of this unfossilised and yet not-decomposed dinosaur tissue is indicative of dinosaurs still walking the planet today? Because that would be the obvious conclusion to draw from such evidence, if indeed such evidence exists, but the implausibility of such a conclusion should lead you to question the evidence.
Debunked how? Evidence please, this should be entertaining. As for your conspiracy theory, please explain what advantage “major universities” (which ones in particular, by the way?) would have in preserving the credibility of a debunked hypothesis? Which professor discovered evidence of design, when was he fired, who fired him, and what precisely was his evidence?
The ChristianNews.com article says “Even when Comfort personally interviews influential evolutionists from major universities in the film (such as well-known atheist PZ Myers), they are unable to satisfyingly answer Comfort’s prodding questions.”
Do you know what this claim is based on?
It’s based on this.
He’s talking about Mary Schweitzer‘s findings, as misinterpreted by idiot creationists. The most important point to bring up when idiot creationists blather on about “unfossilized dinosaur tissue” is that Mary Schweitzer — who has been doing all of the research that idiot creationists quote-mine and parasitize — is not a YEC creationist, and does not conclude that her findings have anything to do with the age of the earth or the time when dinosaurs lived. She accepts and relies on the conventional dating systems that were and are used to date the formations in which the dinosaurs she has worked on were found in.
What appears to be the case is that the bones under discussion were very well preserved; the tissues in the bones were at least partially not permineralized, and, as David Marjanović wrote above, the proteins in the tissues inside the bones were crosslinked; that is, they underwent a chemical reaction such that they were in a stable state which would not decay further.
One problem for laypeople is that “fossilized” is not a well-defined term, and isn’t really relevant to dating fossils. To cite Josh the Geologist:
tl;dr: Do not let creationists bullshit you about “unfossilized”/”soft” dinosaur tissue.
The links are borked Owlmirror.
Permineralization is interesting and not very well studied. I really would like to know what the half life of calcium is, and how long it takes for calcium carbonate to be completely replaced by silica.
Gah. Sorry.
Mary Schweitzer
The other links are OK.
I think the fundies ARE trying to find/show any error at all, so they can “prove” that scientists don’t know what they are doing. To use the auto-design comparison, they are trying to show that Ford engineers are crappy. They don’t separate their criticism into different fields, because they really have no idea what’s going on.
See, a lot of fundies think that science is like religion:
In religious matters, if I am trying to disprove the existence of God, I just need to find one little place where God is not, and the omnipresent aspect goes up in a whiff of logic.They insist that the Bible must be inerrant. If one preacher is faking miracles, all miracles become suspect. Well, they don’t see it quite that way, but they dimly realize that one flaw can destroy the whole religion—-it’s irreducibly complex—if God isn’t inspiring you, what the Hell is? It’s a black-and-white-no-grey-matter, all-or-nothing game. You are either a Christian or you are not, you convert instantly and entirely, you go to Heaven or to Hell. It’s how conservatives “think”.
So they think science is like that. If they can find one little flaw, the whole of science comes crashing down in a big black pile, and their truth rises up, white and shining. They don’t realize that science advances by testing everything for errors, by learning from mistakes, and can change its mind.
So, yeah, if there is some soft tissue in dino bones, everything we know about dinos just goes out the window, along with the reputations of everyone involved. Even if nobody has ever said that there can’t be soft tissue there, and even if it wasn’t soft tissue, and even if the fundies got all their “facts” from the Disco ‘Tute. They know science is wrong, and they live in expectation of proof of that.
That explosion was an adaptive radiation. Adaptive radiations are one of the standard patterns for evolutionary change.
Unmentioned here is that this “unfossilized” T. rex tissue (collagen) was, upon recovery, sequenced. And the sequence is 100% consistent with the hypothesized evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds.
Humans are smart. Humans from a thousand years ago are just as smart as humans today. That they figured out some tricks that modern humans haven’t is hardly surprising.
You also failed to consider all the technological artifacts, very new, that cannot be replicated by ancient means.
Indeed. The difference between a fossil and a subfossil is, by definition, just its age: if some part of an organism is older than 10,000 years, it’s a fossil.
…Yes, that means that most YECs deny the existence of fossils altogether. It also means that very different-looking things are called fossils – fresh-looking cave bear bones with air in the spongy part of the bone just as well as things that are really hard to distinguish from the rock around and in them.
…That’s almost never how it works. Bone is calcium phosphate* and usually remains calcium phosphate after 500 million years, and eggshell is calcium carbonate and remains calcium carbonate after 200 million years**. Two things usually happen: the tiny crystals dissolve and reform as bigger crystals, and the hollow spaces (marrow cavities, blood vessel canals, spaces for bone cells, yadda yadda) are filled in by minerals that precipitate from groundwater. Opalized bones – where the infilling and perhaps some replacement was done by silica – are very rare.
Silicified wood, BTW, isn’t wood that was replaced by silica either (as people used to think); it’s wood that had its empty spaces filled with silica. If you put it in hydrofluoric acid, so that the silica turns into water and the unpleasant gas SiF4, you get the original cell walls out.
* With impurities.
** Hard eggshells are a pretty recent innovation; even today the eggs of mammals (where applicable) and lepidosaurs (except geckos) only have a soft, organic shell.
(Conodonts are calcium phosphate, too.)
I was thinking of marine organisms like coral, and specifically about our local 2.1 byo stromatolites. I believe they were calcite ( the coral) and and calcium carbonate when living?
They are now jasper (marine chert?) with various forms of iron. I found a nice specimin just last Saturday to add to my collection. Even when the fossils retain the white color, they are nearly pure SiO(2).
I can also find cambrian fossil bacterial mats that are quartz in alternating reddish and milky indistinct bands, though they are nowhere near as well preserved as the much older stromatolites.
North Dakota has fossilized spruce trees and fragments all over the place, but I was under the impression that they were permineralized due to glacial meltwater. They look just like wood, no agate or opal. I wish I had the proper equipment and hydroflouric acid. It would be cool to unfossilize a piece.
As someone who has worked with hydrofluoric acid, due care and a good fume hood is absolutely required. Hydrofluoric acid is one of those poisons that may not kill you immediately, but it will work on your bones and teeth, changing calcium hydroxyphosphate to calcium fluorophosphate, which weakens the bones and teeth. The dentists use fluoride treatment to strengthen the enamel an prevent tooth decay. Like a lot of pharmaceuticals, dose is everything.
I have worked with dilute hydroflouric gel for etching porcelain veneers, so I am aware that proper ventilation is important. I used to get upset on a regular basis by my co-workers touching the gel or doing the etching process at their bench.
I am curious now though, what would you use to contain the hf and the piece of petrified wood that would resist the acid? If it dissolves silica, it would dissolve glass.