Comment

Video: Jive Dinosaur Turkeys

604
Cato2/09/2009 9:28:05 am PST

re: #596 Jimmah

re: #597 Mr Secul

re: #598 Charles

The problem, Jimmah, is that you got it backwards: We have the fingerprint, in a sense, not the DNA. Everything presented in Morphed is plausible. But it takes more than the ability to chew leaves in order to digest them. That part of the evolutionary process is lost to us. So is the process whereby fresh-water animals develop into salt-water ones, because, as they said, we don’t have their kidneys. Thus, all explanations of development are based on macro-structure, not chemical processes. So we will never know if the super predator bear that died out died out because it was too big to hang in the forests or whether it had a bad liver gene.

And as for you Charles, you make the case that evolutionary theory is falsifiable. Let’s see if you believe that. There is a population of creatures who are involved in activities that produce fewer offspring, make them less able to hunt effectively, and kills them earlier. These activies become more widespread rather than die out But this population flourishes rather than dies out. It means that either (1) natural selection is wrong with respect to this population or (2) some other factor makes them more worthy of survival despite the withering effects of their behavior, in short Darwin’s formulation of natural selection lacks an “on balance” modifier. This species is humanity which despite violating numerous behavioral prohibitions flourishes. Why do you find that difficult to understand?