I would appreciate it if you would make clear who said what. Your note
below seems to imply (at least to me) that you are saying that I was the
author of what you are responding to. I am not. Cliff Lundberg wrote it.
See:
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199907/0038.html
At 10:37 PM 7/8/99 -0700, Chris Cogan wrote:
>> mortongr@flash.net wrote:
>>
>> >But you know? The big complaint from the anti-evolutionists is that a
>> >feather can't be useful if it is half evolved. Yet when one shows and
>> >example of a half-evolved feather that is very useful, you say that
>because
>> >it is useful it isn't half evolved. Which way do we want to play this
>today?
>>
>> I don't want to play the old game of forcing all the known animals into a
>> simple-to-complex evolutionary series, where we assume that the horizontal
>> classificatory arrangement can be rotated to form the vertical
>evolutionary
>> sequence.
>>
>> Let's get clear on what we don't know. How do you back up the claim that
>> a given structure is a transitional form?
>
>Chris
>Are there any forms that AREN'T transitional forms? If the environment is
>putting enough "pressure" on a species, then whatever forms it ALREADY uses
>to deal with that pressure becomes transitional, because it is along the
>path to the new forms or at least modified forms that will take their
>places. Forms only become non-transitional temporarily, or as long as there
>is no strong evolutionary pressure to change them. Once a bird develops
>wings that suit it to it's habits and environment, they may stabilize for a
>WHILE. But, as soon as the environment demands it, the wings will start to
>change. They could be bred away entirely, if pressures were strong enough
>for a long enough time (suppose the bird is forced to live in an environment
>that prevents flight altogether, but greatly rewards progressive dexterity
>from those same wings; they WILL become some kind of hand-like appendage;
>the genes will learn new tricks, given enough time).
>
>So: What forms are NOT transitional forms, in principle? And WHY do you say
>they are not transitional? What makes one form transitional and another not?
>Is it not transitional if we just don't know where it's "going"? Or what?
>
>
>
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
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