Inconsistency of literalists vs science

[A_Christian]

Sounds like it has more and not less specialized features. GOD didn't want to give this critter full powered flight because he might be more likely to harm humans. It was in a class all it's own. GOD will not be corned or "boxed" by human fabricated classifications. I believe Bob is showing the ambiguities inherent in theoretical research literature.

 

[UTEOTW]

"Sounds like it has more and not less specialized features."

Are you talking about archy or microraptor here? I'll go with microraptor. So fully developed flight feathers on a creature that can only glide is more specialized to you? I see it as a step (though a side branch) towards fully powered flight. I have on my side a series of fossils that show the development of feathers and of the other traits needed for flight. For example the fossil record shows that the motion of the arms for powered flight was first developed as a motion used by hunting, small raptors to grab prey. Only later was the motion and the feathers combined for flight. Why the series of transitions if it was not evolution. If these were simply original "kinds" then why are they not represented today.

"GOD didn't want to give this critter full powered flight because he might be more likely to harm humans."

So with the large raptors running around (Have you seen the description given to the little kid at the beginning of Jurassic Park about velociraptor?) this small little fellow was restricted to gliding to protect us? Do you have any shred of evidence for this conjecture? Any whatsoever? I guess any story will do as Bob likes to say.

Why exactly do we never find ANY human fossils mixed in with the dinosaurs? Not even any apes at all? Maybe because they lived at different periods in time?

"I believe Bob is showing the ambiguities inherent in theoretical research literature. "

So when Bob makes a claim about a conference that he cannot support but which I can show to be false he is just showing "ambiguities?"

Got it.

 

[A_Christian]

Well do you? Humans do not usually hang around with dragons----at least not alive. The Doe Doe Bird isn't around any longer----we don't have any fossils of him and man together either (and yet man wiped him out--or so I am told).

Humans and birds were among the last to drown in the FLOOD. They would be among the least likely to leave behind fossils. The victims of the Titanic didn't either. We do have their shoes and some clothes that were in luggage. It doesn't appear the even the largest ship of its day will be around on the ocean bottom for more than a few hundred years. Thousands of years do take their toll...

It also seems very likely that when human remains are found that they are presumed to be of "modern" origin and a contamination rather then a part of the "actual" site. They would then go UNREPORTED as such.

EVOLUTIONISTS are guilty of taking what they see, find, how they see it, and where they find it out of CREATION context. This is the very some thing some persons are guilty of. This would be a person who skips whole portions of GOD's word in order to cling to a verse or two. The Mormons, JW's, even Roman Catholics, and Evolutionary Christians are but prime examples.

 

[UTEOTW]

"Humans do not usually hang around with dragons----at least not alive."

Dinosaurs inhabited every imaginable ecolgical niche during their day. Fossils have even been found in Antarctic areas. It would have been impossible to avoid being around dinosaurs. And most were not giants. They inhabited a wide range of sizes, many (most?) of which were comparable in size to other land animals today.

"Humans and birds were among the last to drown in the FLOOD."

This one always gives me a laugh. Human fossils are on top because they were best able to escape?

Can we say the same things about plants> SO let's see, grasses run faster than angiosperms which run faster than conifers which run faster than ferns which run fasterthan the other more simple plants.

Whales are able to escape better than the sharks and marine reptiles.

Large mammals are able to escape more quickly than all the large reptiles.

The various members of the horse "kind" were able to escape in just such an order (consistently at different locations) to make it look like they evolved.

Got it.

 

[A_Christian]

I believe that you will find that "horses" are not found in any "real" order. This is one evolutionist's ploys to draw his scale and make it look convincing. The bones of these have been found with those of "modern" horses.

There are more sharks then whales and they are likley to hang in shallow areas (that would have exposed them to mud slides, etc... that would have stranded them and placed them in greater numbers in harms way.

Large mammals likely hung in areas where humans did----away from dragons. The areas where dragons lived may have been first on the list to be submerged. Swamp and lowlands would go under first. The flooding to many spots would have been swift. Men don't like living in swamps. Conifers are a lot sturdier then "grasses". Grasses tend to exist for man's benefit and there is no Biblical suggestion that man existed everywhere on the earth. The Flood possibly started in NOVEMBER. This would have been after harvest time.
In fact, it wasn't until AFTER the Flood and the tower of Babel that GOD caused man to disperse. Man seemed to like to hang tight. We ALSO have no real clue how many people existed on the earth at the time of the Flood.

This seems so plain to me, I don't understand why you seem not to imagine any of this yourself...
Perhaps you devote your energy to evolutionistic models and simply missed the "ark".

 

[BobRyan]

Evolutionists major in obfuscating the obvious (as usual).

It is not a question of running faster. It is a question of competing for high ground. In the end (as in any flood) there is high ground (and oops! It has grass!) The question of WHO will own the high ground depends on skill and ability to compete. To have the "ability" to get to high ground, to "know" to go there and to know what to do when you get there.

"Obvious" I know. But the obvious is not the friend of evolutionism.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Obviously, BobRyan, the flyers would be able to get higher than the walkers. The Pterodactylus (tehr-o-DAK-til-us) and Pteranodon (teh-RAN-o-dahn), flying reptiles alledged to exist only in times prior to man, would be commonly found up with the higher, agile creatures. Of course, the fossil evidence here once again refutes your imaginative speculation.

However, your ability to take a pre-determined goal and interpret all the evidence in favor of that goal could carry you far in the current administration, where they really like having people to interpret all their incoming intelligence information according to the party line!

 

[BobRyan]

They would be able to "get higher" and get there faster. However if the humans were able to get there but simply took more time to do it, wouldn't the human who arrived at high ground "be able" to displace a bird or two? Possible convince them to "fly"? (You know, like we do today?).

Just returning focus to the "obvious".

However the problem is "not" just one of chasing birds off of the high ground that the humans get to and are able to hold. (As much as evolutionists like to over-simplify in the name of evolutionism over scripture).

We must also look at the result of flooding even the high ground and the sorting action of turbidity currents that result. Further you have the geothermal and massive hydrolic events mixing the resulting material distribution.

Evolutionists "like" to "pretend" that they are fully informed on all variables and factors in the world wide flood such that God's Word could not possibly be true. (How "surprising") But they show little evidence of that.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

The gets us away from the constant misdirection, obfuscation and "proof-by-puzzle" tactics of evolutionists and back to the main point of the thread.

Atheist evolutionists are "expected" to cling to the myths of evolutionism despite the numerous and obvious flaws, blunders, gaffs and foibles of the junk-science we call "evolutionism" today. They admit that for the truly dedicated atheist there is really no other choice no matter how difficult the challenges from real science against their religion.

But in this discussion - on this board, we have the advantage of asking evolutionists here to show sound exegetical practices when they dismiss the Word of God in Gen 1-2;3, Exodus 20:8-11, in Romans 1 and 5 and 8 and...

What is interesting is that Christian Evolutionists will hold the Bible as servant to the whims of the junk-science that Atheist's call "fact" -- evolutionism.

How fascinating.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
[QB] If archy is a "real bird" then tell us why it has dozens of features which are present in NTHER bird

It is the atheist evolutionist that "admits" Archaeopteryx is "TRUE BIRD".

(Not only that - evolutionists admit that REAL BIRDS PRECEED the earlist known Archaeopteryx)

However UTEOTW is at least returning to a level of logic in insisting that Archaeopteryx CAN't really be a TRUE BIRD for the myths and junk-science of evolutionism to be true.

I applaud that argument on his behalf - though it contradicts his own atheist mentors.

In 1982, (a year before the furor over the Hoyle-Watkins declarations that Archaeopteryx was a hoax) the International Archaeopteryx Conference was held in Eichstatt, Germany, not far from the limestone deposits where all the specimens were originally found. At this meeting, it was decided by the evolutionists that Archaeopteryx is a "bird" and not a reptile, or half-bird/half-reptile. It was also decided that Archaeopteryx was not necessarily the ancestor of modern birds.

They deny the expected (by evolutionism) appearance of feathers from reptiles.

How [feathers] arose initially, presumably from reptiles scales, defies analysis... It seems, from the complex construction of feathers, that their evolution from reptilian scales would have required an immense period of time and involved a series of intermediate structures. So far, the fossil record does not bear out that supposition. (Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, Dover, 1985, pp. 349-350.)

)

They confess to the biased, junk-science methods of evolutionist devotees when over-stating the case for reptile evolution based on Archaeopteryx supposed reptilian features.

As Alan Feduccia, one of the leading ornithologists in the world, has stated,

"Most recent workers who have studied various anatomical features of Archaeopteryx have found the creature to be much more birdlike than previously imagined," and "the resemblance of Archaeopteryx to theropod dinosaurs has been grossly overestimated." (Alan Feduccia, The Origin and Evolution of Birds, Yale University Press, 1999, p. 81)

They confess the emberassing blunders of the overzealous evolutionist "faithful" clansmen clinging to junk-science rather than reason.

Well, I've studied bird skulls for 25 years and I don't see any similarities whatsoever. I just don't see it... The theropod origins of birds, in my opinion, will be the greatest embarrassment of paleontology of the 20th century. ( Pat Shipman, "Birds Do It... Did Dinosaurs?," New Scientist, February 1, 1997, p. 28)

Bottom line for Archaeopteryx ...

- No prior transitions. There ought to be transitional species from reptile to Archaeopteryx, but this is not the case. It cannot be a connecting link between reptile and bird, for there are no transitions to bridge the immense gap leading from it to the reptile. It has fully developed bird wing-bones and flight feathers.


And so though we applaud the efforts of UTEOTW to consistently engage in his own program of misdirection and obfuscation.

The blunders, flaws, embarassments and foibles of the junk-science that atheist's call "evolutionism" has been made apparent in the case of Archaeopteryx.

Clearly.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[UTEOTW]

Oh Bob, now provide us with a citation for your quote about the conference. I don't think you can provide one. Because it is a false claim. Again, here are the names of the papers presented at the conference that I can find. They do not fit your quote.

Keep in mind that I am not giving the full citation for these, it gets hard to work through for the reader. They may all be found in The Beginnings of Birds. Proceedings of the International Archaeopteryx Conference Eichstätt, 1984. I am also only listing the first author.

Norberg, "Evolution of flight in birds: Aerodynamic, mechanical and ecological aspects."

Raath, "The theropod Syntarsus and its bearing on the origin of birds."

Schaller, "Wing evolution."

Peters, "Functional and Constructive Limitations in the Early Evolution of Birds."

Gauthier, "Phylogenetic, functional, and aerodynamic analyses of the origin of birds and their flight."

Bock, "The arboreal theory for the origin of birds."

Rayner, "Mechanical and ecological constraints on flight evolution."

Peters, "Constructional and Functional Preconditions for the Transition to Powered Flight."

Taquet, "Two new Jurassic specimens of coelurosaurs (Dinosauria)"

Rietschel, "Feathers and wings of Archaeopteryx , and the question of her flight ability."

Molnar, "Alternatives to Archaeopteryx; a Survey of Proposed Early or Ancestral Birds."

Now, do these really sound like the kinds of papers that would be presented at a conference where they decided that what we have is merely a unique bird and not any sort of transitional?

 

[UTEOTW]

Oh, and thanks for quote mining Feduccia, it gives me another chance to tell folks what he really thinks.

"Certainly, Archaeopteryx is a transitional form from reptile to bird."

And

"The creature thus memorialized was Archaeopteryx lithographica, and, though indisputably birdlike, it could with equal truth be called reptilian.... The Archaeopteryx fossil is, in fact, the most superb example of a specimen perfectly intermediate between two higher groups of living organisms--what has come to be called a "missing link," a Rosetta stone of evolution."

 

[UTEOTW]

"No prior transitions. "

And I have given you animals both more reptile like and more bird like in the past, too.

Sinosauropteryx, Microraptor, Yixianosaurus, Compsognathus, Protarchaeopteryx, Caudipteryx, Avimimus, Sinornis, Ambiortus, Confuciusornis, Neornithes, Changchengornis, Gobipteryx, and Alexornis to name a few.

 

[UTEOTW]

"I believe that you will find that "horses" are not found in any "real" order. This is one evolutionist's ploys to draw his scale and make it look convincing. The bones of these have been found with those of "modern" horses."

Just to take your first point. There are dozens of genera in the evolution of horses and I think you will find that there are never more than a few ofthem overlapping at any given point, not the beginning overlapping with the end. Pretty good sorting there, don't you think?

Oh one more.

"There are more sharks then whales and they are likley to hang in shallow areas (that would have exposed them to mud slides, etc... that would have stranded them and placed them in greater numbers in harms way."

So, then, why are the cetaceans that live close in to shore not buried down in the deepest layers, too? Dolphins for example? Should they not then be buried more deeply than the ocean going whales? I do not think this is what we see at all. Should this not mean that dolphins should be found in the oldest layers where we have sharks? But they're not.

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
If archy is a "real bird" then tell us why it has dozens of features which are present in NTHER bird but that are present in the theropod dinosaurs? Tell us what those series of feathered animals that are more and more reptile like than archy are then if all we have are "real birds?" I'll just ask for one. Microraptor. A small dinosaur with fully formed flight feathers on all four limbs but an anatomy that shows that it was not capable of full powered flight. Bird or reptile? If archy is a bird then why does it not have a beak?

And while I am asking questions, do you think Bob is trying to mislead us on what the presenters at the conference he referenced had to say about archy?

Nope! As usual UTOETW - you are simply wrong.

#1. The International Archaeopteryx Conference of the 1980's DID concluded Archaeopteryx was a true bird NOT a reptile but TRUE bird. (Though you cling to the idea that it is an intermediate BETWEEN true bird and reptile as you "so desperately" need.)

#2. Archaeopteryx had fully formed flight feathers.

Just the obvious UTEOTW!

You seem to need to misdirect and obfuscate - so I wanted to state it again.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
[QB] Oh Bob, now provide us with a citation for your quote about the conference. I don't think you can provide one. Because it is a false claim. Again, here are the names of the papers presented at the conference that I can find. They do not fit your quote.

My quote shows them as declaring Archaeopteryx to be "TRUE BIRD".


Further my post shows that TRUE birds are OLDER than the OLDEST Archaeopteryx.

Modern birds below Archaeopteryx! Not only do we find modern birds in the same strata with Archaeopteryx,—but we also find birds below it!

"Perhaps the final argument against Archaeopteryx as a transitional form has come from a rock quarry in Texas. Here scientists from Texas Tech University found bird bones encased in rock layers farther down the geologic column than Archaeopteryx fossils."—Richard Bliss, Origins: Creation or Evolution? (1988), p. 46 [also see Nature 322, August 21, 1986; Science 253, July 5, 1991].

No bird bones of any type have been found below the late Jurassic; but, within the Jurassic, they have been found in strata with Archaeopteryx, and now below it: Two crow-sized birds were discovered in the Triassic Dockum Formation in Texas. Because of the strata they were located in, those birds would, according to evolutionary theory, be 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx. More information on this Texas discovery can be found in *Nature, 322 (1986), p. 677.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

In short - there is nothing inconsistent about believing IN the future resurrection, the historic resurrection of Christ, the virgin birth, the miracles of Christ and of God "REALLY" happening and the REAL view of Gen 1-2:3 that is PERFECTLY described in Exodus 20:8-11 "FOR IN SIX DAYS the LORD MADE... and rested the 7th day".

The Bible is right!

In Christ,

Bob

 

[UTEOTW]

"My quote shows them as declaring Archaeopteryx to be "TRUE BIRD"."

Do you know what a citation is? You cannot just assert that this is what they said and then when asked for proof just point out that you said it. You need to give us some sort of reference to something official from the conference that shows your point. You have not done so.

"#1. The International Archaeopteryx Conference of the 1980's DID concluded Archaeopteryx was a true bird NOT a reptile but TRUE bird. (Though you cling to the idea that it is an intermediate BETWEEN true bird and reptile as you "so desperately" need.)"

Who are you quoting as saying "so desperately?"

No Bob, you have yet to give us any support for this, although you post it till we are all blue in the face. I have provided you with evidence contrary to your position.* YOu have yet to provide any support for your assertion. I believe it is because you cannot because it is a false assertion. Though I wait with great anticipation for you to provide some sort of proof for this claim, I do not anticipate any to ever be forthcoming.

"#2. Archaeopteryx had fully formed flight feathers."

It lacks a beak! You claim a true bird that does not have a beak!

Just like the dinosaurs, its trunk vertebrae are not fused while in all birds they are fused.

Its pubic shaft is plate like just like the dromaeosaurs but unlike any bird.

Its head attaches to its neck in the rear just like the dinosuars but unlike any birds.

Its cervixal vertebrae are shaped just like those of the other archosaurs but unlike those of any bird.

It has a long tail with mostly free vertebrae just like in the reptiles while birds all have short, fused tails.

Its pelvic girdle is shaped just like the other archosaurs but completely unlike those of any bird.

Its sacrum consists of six vertebrae just like in the bird like dinosaurs while birds have 2 to 4 TIMES as many vertebrae in their sacrum.

Its nasal opening is in the same location as reptiles but not any birds.

Its fibula and tibia are of the same length just as in all reptiles but in birds the fibia is much shortened.

Why don't you make a case for microraptor being either a bird or a reptile for us. It had fully formed flight feathers.

*Sice you have not given any support for your assertion about the conference, I will repost one of my lines of support that show you to be wrong here. Take a look, again, at this list of paper presented at the conference. Remeber that this is a conference on archy and ask yourself if this sounds like the kind of papers that would be presented if they thought that archy was a mere bird completely unrelated to the reptiles.

They may all be found in The Beginnings of Birds. Proceedings of the International Archaeopteryx Conference Eichstätt, 1984. I am also only listing the first author.

Norberg, "Evolution of flight in birds: Aerodynamic, mechanical and ecological aspects."

Raath, "The theropod Syntarsus and its bearing on the origin of birds."

Schaller, "Wing evolution."

Peters, "Functional and Constructive Limitations in the Early Evolution of Birds."

Gauthier, "Phylogenetic, functional, and aerodynamic analyses of the origin of birds and their flight."

Bock, "The arboreal theory for the origin of birds."

Rayner, "Mechanical and ecological constraints on flight evolution."

Peters, "Constructional and Functional Preconditions for the Transition to Powered Flight."

Taquet, "Two new Jurassic specimens of coelurosaurs (Dinosauria)"

Rietschel, "Feathers and wings of Archaeopteryx , and the question of her flight ability."

Molnar, "Alternatives to Archaeopteryx; a Survey of Proposed Early or Ancestral Birds."

Now, do these really sound like the kinds of papers that would be presented at a conference where they decided that what we have is merely a unique bird and not any sort of transitional?

 

[UTEOTW]

"Further my post shows that TRUE birds are OLDER than the OLDEST Archaeopteryx."

We should all be able to say this together now.

Archy is not on the direct line to birds. It is a side branch that preserves many of the features of the true intermediate but that intermediate lived before archy.

 

[A_Christian]

oh, brother...