OK, Bob, here we go again.
We are quickly closing in on something here. You have tried very, very hard to keep from getting pinned down on anything. I have had to feed you a lot of rope but lucky for me you are perfectly willing to hang yourself with it.
I said:
"This makes it sound like the original series did not have any transitionals at all."
You responded:
"Wrong "again".
The debunking of the fraudulently arranged sequence DOES NOT depend on finding EVERY detail to be a fraud. All you have to do is find that the overall story is contrived, is simply ARRANGED to fit the story.
Your vaccuous point above is like say "when you say the fraudulent series is bad you make it sound like none of the fossils were REAL"."
So you admit that some parts were correct. This is a good start. You are unwilling to claim that the transitionals that Marsh proposed do not belong in the horse lineage. You are unwilling to claim that he got the starting and end points wrong. You are unwilling to say that he got the changes that happened along the way wrong. You are unwilling to claim that he got the overall timeframe wrong.
So you concede that Marsh was mostly right. So what do you claim is wrong and where do you go wrong?
This quote shows the first place you go wrong. You said "the overall story is contrived, is simply ARRANGED to fit the story."
This is the first place you go wrong. There was not a story formed and the data then arranged to fit it. No, Marsh went and found the fossils. He was the first to recognize them as proto horses. The story was formed to fit what he had found, not the other way as you alledge.
How could it have possibly been the way you claim? No one else had a good idea of where horses came from in order to concoct such a story.
So now let's look at what you seem to be saying was fraudulent.
"It is atheist dwarinians[sic] THEMSELVES that admit that the series DOES OBVIOUSLY (to adults and children alike) SHOW smooth orthogenic transitional sequencing ALL the way through!"
and
"The fraudulent series SHOWS size changes FROM THE START. By using REAL fossils REALLY arranged to show changes in size that Atheist darwinians DENY ever HAPPENING.
The fraudulent series SHOWS smooth orthogenic change through the series BY ARRANGING fossils AS IF this was "discovered FACT"."
You finally seem to have settled on something specific.
You seem to have decided that the fraudulent part was to assert that the change was smooth and gradual when the record shows that it was anything but. OK.
First off, this in itself is progress. You seem to longer be asserting that your quotes say that horses did not evolve. You are at least moving towards what the authors were intending. To claim that Simpson was saying that smooth change was claimed but never happened in nature is getting close to what he was trying to say. You still excise his discussion of what the actual change was like, so we are not completely there. But it is a start.
So you say that it was fraudulent to arrange the fossils into a smooth continuum of change. Let's examine that assertion.
First off, at the time that Marsh was doing his work, there were few transitional fossils known. The idea of the day was that change occurred slowly and gradually. It was the prevailing idea. So I first challenge your assertion that there fraud involved with using the dominate assertion in his analysis. It turned out to be wrong, but it was not fraud.
Now let's look at another aspect of this. Today the horse series is known by a whole slew of fossils. There are at least 60 different genera known. Some of these are represented by multiple species. I don't know what the total number of fossil horse species that are known is, but I would guess that it is in the hundreds. It was this richer data set at which Simpson and others were looking when they declared that the horse showed phylogetic change.
So what did Marsh have to work with?
He knew 8 specimens. Anchippus, Anchitherium, Equus, Hipparion, Miohippus, Orohippus, Pliohippus and Protohippus.
So let's think about this. Out of hundreds of examples that were later known, he had 8. 8 unevenly spaced samples over millions of years. Now even this was sufficient to draw some conclusions. He recognized them as proto horses which you do not deny. He recognized the path from a general browser to a specialized grazer which you do not deny. He recognized the change in size which you do not deny. He recognized the change in feet (number of toes and pads vs hooves) which you do not deny. He recignized all of the aspects and drew all of these conclusions which were proven through time and which you have not challenged.
Yet you still assert fraud. Why?
Well you say "The fraudulent series SHOWS smooth orthogenic change through the series BY ARRANGING fossils AS IF this was "discovered FACT"."
Let me argue by analogy.
Let's say there is a building going up. It takes one year to erect. Now I am going to randomly take 8 snapshots of the building in the process of being built. I will give you the snapshots and ask you to provide me back detailed information on the progress of the building on a daily basis. By what means would you determine how long various activities lasted? How would you determine the rates of progress on various aspects of construction? You would find it difficult to be very accurate and would be forced to extrapolate from what little data you had available.
So it was with Marsh. He had a sequence which was sufficient to draw all these conclusions which proved to be correct. But what he did not have was sufficient resolution to get the rate of change at all points correct.
It is this mistake due to insufficient data that you are labeling fraud. It was not fraud. It was wrong. But, in light of the prevailing ideas of his day and in light of the limited resolution of the data, it was a reasonable conclusion. There was nothing fraudulent about it.
And as more data was collected, most of the ideas of Marsh were confirmed. The tempo of evolution was found to be incorrect and the sequence was updated accordingly.
But that is just how the method works. There is no fraud. There are no just so stories.
You have failed to make the case that Marsh committed fraud. The most that you can do is to point out that out of several conclusions he reached, only the tempo of the change needed major modification as more data became available.
And although you call this a thread about the debunked horse series, the only thing you seem to have debunked is the pace of change. You seem to have caught up with the scientists of the first half of the last century in that regard. I suppose that any progress with an evolution denier is something.
"The fraudulent series SHOWS size changes FROM THE START. By using REAL fossils REALLY arranged to show changes in size that Atheist darwinians DENY ever HAPPENING."
You seem confused here.
The size changes did start back at the beginning of the series. Just because they were not steady does not mean that they did not happen at all.
"Oh if only we could talk about the modern story "instead" of the subject of the thread eh UTEOTW??!"
Well, you don't seem much interested in talking about the real transitional series. Just as well. Learning something about it might be hazardous to your worldview.
But I think you may have overlooked another corner into which you have painted yourself.
You have made it perfectly clear that you are not interested in discussing the modern horse sequence in this thread. But it will come up again one day. And you will likely drag out your quotes. And this thread will become prosecution exhibit number 1 of what you say these quotes mean. You have come around to accepting that they are referring to the tempo of the change and that there are referring to the original series put together by Marsh.
So if you pull them out in regard to the real series, you will have a doubly whammy. First, the context will be pointed out to show what the authors intended. Then this thread will be drug out to show that you understood that the quotes referred to the original Marsh series and to the pace of change.
And for that matter, time will not change quotes into facts. You do not argue facts, you argue quotes. Quotes are not science.
