On Wed, 28 Aug 1996 21:09:09, Glenn Morton wrote:
[continued]
GM>368 MYR-Ichthyostega-- much like Acanthostega but has 7 digits on
>his hindlimb. He has lungs. His legs were only good for being in
>water. They could not support his weight. (Coates and Clack, 1990,
>p. 67)
More evidence of prior planning. A fish developed lungs well before it
needed them for land. Then mutations needed to change the fins
into legs and toes would come to that fish and no other: the right
fish, in the right place, and the right time. Not bad for a "blind
watchmaker" which: "...has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and
no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision,
no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of
watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker." (Dawkins R., "The
Blind Watchmaker", Penguin: London, 1991, p5)
The hidden assumption behind Darwinist macro-evolution is that the
right mutations will come along in the right order to the right
animal, in the right environment, so that the next stage can proceed:
"Can blind watchmaker evolution as described by Dawkins actually
produce complex adaptive improvements like the bat's wings? The
answer depends on the validity of the factual assumptions that
underlie the model. Several conditions must be met before evolution
of the blind watchmaker sort can occur, and each one is highly
problematical. First, gene mutations of the necessary
complexity-building type must occur sufficiently frequently to build
the improvement. Unfortunately, mutations having a favorable effect
on the organism are extremely rare. Dawkins himself says that the
mutations in question would probably have to be too small in effect
to be observable, because "virtually all the mutations studied in
genetics laboratories-which are pretty macro because otherwise
geneticists wouldn't notice them-are deleterious to the animals
possessing them." The mutations that the blind watchmaker model
requires must be not only favorable, but favorable in the very strong
sense that they provide exactly what is needed for the next stage of
the wing- building project. That each individual mutation is
supposed to produce only a slight effect in the desired direction
implies that there will have to be an enormous number of exactly the
right kind of mutations to finish the job-and wings are only one of
myriad alterations needed to modify a tree climber into a bat. The
only reason to believe that mutations of the kind and quantity needed
for blind watchmaker evolution actually occur is that the theory
requires them." (Johnson P.E., "Reason in the Balance", InterVarsity
Press: Downers Grove Ill., 1995, pp80-81)
As zoologist Pierre Grasse (past-president of France's Academy of
Science and author of a 28-volume encyclopedia of zoology) put it in
a sarcastically counter-attack against Darwinist mysticism:
"...nature acts blindly, uninteligently, but by an infinitely
benevolent good fortune builds mechanisms so intricate that we have
not even finished with analysis of their structure and have not the
slightest insight of the physical principles and functioning of some
of them." (Grasse P.P., "The Evolution of Living Organisms",
Academic Press: New York, 1977, p168) (hereafter Grasse).
Nevertheless, there is still major differences between the
lobe-finned fishes and Ichthyostega:
"The 'link' most often suggested is between rhipidistian
crossopterygian fish and an amphibian genus known as Ichthyostega. A
similarity of skull pattern, and of vertebrae, can be seen, and the
fin-bones in crossopterygian fish are also said to be the forerunners
of amphibian limbs. But the creatures are aeons apart, anatomically.
The limbs and pelvic girdle of the amphibian are well adapted for
walking on land. Yet there is nothing whatsoever in the fossil
record to show how they reached this stage." (Hitching F., "The Neck
of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong", 1982, Ticknor & Fields:
New York, p21)
GM>362 MYR-Acanthostega - has four legs, lungs but still has gills.
>(Coates and Clack , 1991, p. 234) He has 8 digits on his front leg.
>His legs could not support his weight either. (Coats and Clack,
>1990, p. 66-67). He has fishlike lower arm bones (Coates and Clack
>1990, p. 67)
Hang on here. Your statement was that "The fish tetrapod transition
is quite smooth." Well, we have already passed that point:
358-352 MYR ..Pennsylvania...only lungs...no gills..walking
362 MYR-Acanthostega-has four legs, lungs but still has gills
368 MYR-Ichthyostega-...like Acanthostega...has lungs...legs.
---------------fish tetrapod transition---------------
378 MYR ago-Pandericthys-lobe-finned fish.
Either Ichthyostega is the nearest transitional fossil between fish
and tetrapods, or Acanthostega is, it cannot be both. Which is it to
be? :-) And there is still a 10 MY gap. In that gap a fish (a
putative descendant of a unknown Pandericthyid common ancestor) grew
legs, toes and pelvic/shoulder structures to support them, 20 million
years before it eventually needed them on land.
Here is some more about Acanthostega showing its un-Darwinian
development of legs underwater when it didn't need them:
"Clack who works at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Zoology,
discovered the bulk of Acanthostega's skeleton in 1987 and has been
carefully reconstructing it ever since with fellow paleontologist
Michael Coates. They are just finishing up their monographs on the
creature, and some of the conclusions they've drawn from its body are
surprising other paleontologists. For a long time it was assumed
that our limbs and feet, which work so well for walking on land,
evolved for that exact purpose. But Acanthostega has convinced
(Clack and Coates otherwise; tetrapod anatomy evolved while our
ancestors lived exclusively underwater and it evolved for life
underwater. The first vertebrate that walked onto land didn't crawl
on fish find, it had evolved well-turned legs millions of years
beforehand." (Zimmer C., "Coming Onto the Land", Discover, June
1995, pp120)
>558-552 MYR A fossil found in Pennsylvania which is the second oldest
>amphibian, has only lungs and no gills and is fully capable of walking on
>land. (Washington Post, 117:(239): A2, Mnday Aug. 1, 1994)
I presume you mean 358-352 MYR? I would like more details of this
"fossil". Was it written up in an scientific journal?
GM>Stephen, the transition can be no smoother than the number of
>fossil forms we have. We don't have a lot so the sampling is not as
>smooth as you seem to think it must be.
The problem is not the "the number of fossil forms we have", which
might be explained by sampling error. It is the *systematic* failure
of the fossil record to document intermediate forms *in the process
of transition*:
"The fundamental problem in explaining the gaps in terms of an
insufficient search or in terms of the imperfection of the record is
their systematic character - the fact that there are fewer
transitional species between the major divisions than between the
minor....this rule applies universally throughout the living kingdom
to all types of organisms, both those that are poor candidates for
fossilization such as insects and those which are ideal, like
molluscs. But thisis the exact reverse of what is required by
evolution. Discontinuities we might be able to explain away in terms
of some sort of sampling error but their systematic character defies
all explanation. If the gaps really were the result of an
insufficient search, or the result of the imperfection of the record,
then we should expect to find more transitional forms between mouse
and whale than between dog and cat." (Denton M., "Evolution: A
Theory in Crisis", Burnett Books: London, 1985, pp192-193).
Ratzsch also makes the same point:
"But the troubles involved details of the geological record....The
same thing could be said for some popular evolutionist arguments.
For instance, some evolutionists explain the stubborn persistence of
fossil gaps in terms of inherent imperfections in the fossil record.
That record is no doubt imperfect. By some estimates we have fossils
of less than I percent of all species that have ever lived. But the
problem with the proposed blanket explanation is that it turns out
that there is a specific pattern to the imperfection, a pattern that
one would rot expect on a straightforward Darwinian view." (Ratzsch
D.L., "The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the
Creation-Evolution Debate", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Ill.,
1996, pp83-84)
This systematic pattern of gaps in the fossil record (more
lower/less higher) is the exact opposite from what one would expect
of a Darwinian branching bush:
"Because Darwinian evolution is a purposeless, chance-driven process,
which would not proceed directly from a starting point to a
destination, there should also be thick bushes of side branches in
each line. As Darwin himself put it, if Darwinism is true the
Precambrian world must have "swarmed with living creatures" many of
which were ancestral to the Cambrian animals." (Johnson P.E.,
"Darwinism's Rules of Reasoning", in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds.,
"Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?", Foundation for Thought and
Ethics: Richardson TX, 1994, pp13-14).
This is presumabky why Darwinists like Oxford zoologist Ridley, a
colleague of Dawkins, declares belatedly that the fossil record is
"useless for testing between evolution and special creation":
"...the gradual change of fossil species has never been part of
the evidence for evolution. In the chapters on the fossil record in
the Origin of Species. Darwin showed that the record was useless for
testing between evolution and special creation because it has great
gaps in it. The same argument still applies. Eldredge and Gould
pointed out the fossil record might be even less complete than Darwin
had thought. Populations in the process of speciating are probably
small and geographically separated from their ancestral population,
so the full course of speciation would not be preserved at any one
site of fossil deposition. What we would see is a series replaced by
another, obviously related and yet with no gradual intermediate
forms. In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or
punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the
theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." (Ridley M.,
"Who doubts evolution?' New Scientist, vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p831)
All this is inconsient with an undirected, gradualist theory like
Neo-Darwinist "evolution" but fully consistent with a *directed*
"fast-transition" theory like PC.
God bless.
Steve
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