The Missing Link

Many thanks for the fascinating link. It was enlightening to see the research team and their discoveries in more detail!

I’m baaaack…hey Ned, at least I hope, you can understand my frustration at having to go to BBC News or your blog to read about this discovery. That NBC or CBS didn’t show it wasn’t that surprising…but ABC its usually pretty up-to-date in science news,(it was a nice piece on friday by the way), then some people wondered why students do so badly in science class in this country, when they’re encourage to believe in fairy tales and not science, or science-related topics, read what Doris has to say if you don’t believe me!!!!

How do we know that this “fish that blurs the distinction between a fish and a land-living animal” isn’t just the result of a long Artic night of partying in prehistoric ooze, by a type of crocodile and some sort of fish? For the media to so readily jump to the “missing link” conclusion is about as brilliant as telling everyone to run for the end of the rainbow’s supposed pot of gold. It ain’t there, kids! One more thought, maybe this was evidence of a land-living animal becoming a fish? Hmmmm

Michael: Science, especially evolutionary, is much like reading the Bible. It requires one to dismiss all personal prejudice and agenda to obtain the truth. If you have an agenda in either case you will find the evidence you seek.
It is good to remember science is as much disabled by what it does not know as it is enabled by what it does know.

Michael: A careful reading of what I said will reveal I was not comparing Evolutionary Science with the contents of the Bible. The issue is how they are approached. In either case, you will find the evidence to substantiate your agenda if you approach them to prove your belief. IOW If you approach either with an agenda your outcome will be skewed.
You assert belief in God is the result of unquestioning acceptance. Do you mean those that believe in God (that is most of us in this country)are all uneducated, unstudied, unthinking, careless, mindless twits. That is wishful thinking on your part.
Since non-believers seem to be superior beings in your eyes, perhaps you should look closely at say Marx and Lennin to be reminded said non-believers may not be so superior after all.
Those that believe in God have the same odds of being right as those who don’t. 50-50 chance.

Michael: My apologies. I noticed my mistake in addressing you rather than Paolo when I checked back. But since you were aware I was responding to Paolo’s comments. Why then did you take them personally. It was Paolo who said in essence you have to do this and that to be a scientist but believing in God requires unquestioning acceptance. So, I asked did unquestioning acceptance mean believers are uneducated, unstudied, careless, mindless twits. The comment was not addressed to you since you did not write the comments I was responding to. And, my description is not what I believe, but what I thought Paolo was inferring.
I realize science has a peer review process. But I also realize science also has peer pressure. If the majority of peers become prejudiced, so goes the science. It becomes to great a personal risk to go against the grain. Yes, I am saying I believe this pressure may exist in evolutionary theory as this theory is protected with religious fervor. As you may have surmised, I am a believer of the Christian God and I, therefore, believe his word. It says in Romans 1:20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisivle nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). Therefore, I have some expectation science ought be able to find at least one thing that is not contrary to believers and announce it. Yes, I full well understand the purpose of science is neither to prove that God exists or does not exist. And, that would probably not even be debated if evolutionary science was not forced upon the children of those who do not believe they or their children are a part of the ape family. I personally do not have any children, so this has not been an issue with me, but it is to many. We do not teach children every scientific theory in existance, but, we make sure they are taught this one. And, if any one mentions maybe it should not be taught, it is the scientific community that pitches a fit and insists this theory be forced down the throat of all. I personally believe in evolution to a certain extent exactly because of the scripture I quoted to you. God has written himself into creation (paraphrase.) IOW He has written spiritual truths into the physical creation. He speaks of how we can evolve from a base sinner separated(out of fellowship) fom Him and become a new creature acceptable for fellowship with him in his kingdom. Therefore, I believe we should be able to find written into creation this concept of evolution. But, I also believe this science is overdone or overblown. Don’t have time to go into that now and it may not be worthwhile to go into it because after all IMAO
Moving along to the 50-50 chance. My reference to Paolo on this was to say respect should be shown for the other side, no matter what side you are on because they have just as much chance of being right. That is not based on the pantheon of sub possibilites, but on the basic belief a supreme being exists or the other basic belief, a supreme being does not exist, leaving science vs god out of the whole equation.
Quick question about the creationists you speak to. Are they simply believers in the biblical account of creation or are they the current creation scientists who have not evolved into evolution scientists as the creation scientists of old did? I probably will not have time to check back to find your answer until next week.
Please forgive me any errors, misspelling, grammatical errors, etc. Simply noting the time I get to blog should explain part of the problem. My sharpness has been dulled by this time of night.
My preconcived notions will have to wait for another day. Probably have a few being part of the human family on earth.

Paolo: Thank you for your clarification. I’m glad to know you realize believers in God are not mindless twits.
Quoting you “all I was saying was that usually your’re taught to believe in God” For your information I was not raised in church or by parents who mentioned it much one way or the other.” So, I was not taught to believe in God. But yes, I was exposed to the Christian Gospel through various means over the years. I did not become, for lack of better words, a practicing believer until I was 35 years old. My point is: My experience is not based on what I was initially taught. As a matter of fact I had many preconceived notions of what Christianity was that it actually was not. And, you don’t have to be a priest to live in the world and believe in God. Are you proposing we adopt the socialist/communist ethic of complete secularism in the complete public arena. Not possible. To say one should leave his beliefs at home when he politics in the natural world is not obtainable especially in a free society.
Previously you has said comparing the Bible with Evolutionary Science is like comparing DiVinci with a palm reader. Apparently you think science and the bible are not compatible. I assume you mean Science is now, but the bible is ancient history and not relevant. I would like to tell you a few things. The Bible may be ahead of science: Recent scientific (medical) has just recently made a few passages in the bible possible and understandable. First, the bible speaks of the “virgin birth” as most people know it. We now have been shown surrogacy by science which shows how this was possible. The Bible says Jesus was with God and was God and became flesh. This is flowery language, but sort of sounds like clonning. In short Jesus could have been God cloned into an earthly body, carried to birth in the womb of a surrogate Mary. This was done the creative power of God, rather than a physical implant as humans do. But this concept of clonning and surrogacy appears to be in the bible approx. 2000 years before it appears in science. Also, science says everything came out of the water (paraphrase) In the account of creation the bible says this: ….and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be firmament in the midst of the water and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the frimament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament and it was so. God called the firmament Heaven and God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appears: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the water called he Seas.
So, the bible and science are not far apart on the beginning of things. You should read the book of Revelations if you believe in the global warming theory. But mostly I find this amusing: The Bible says the earth was perfect until man was created and sinned (disobeying God) and ruined everything. A savior was the needed and Jesus was sent and paid the price to redeem mankind from their sin. But the world will end as we know it in Armageddon and Jesus will have to return to bring a new heaven and earth. Science says the earth was perfect until mankind sinned (big oil and modern living) ruining everything and now a savior is needed, namely Science to lead us out of Armageddon,( global warming) and create a new heaven and earth.

G. Allan: “But since you were aware I was responding to Paolo’s comments. Why then did you take them personally.”
I didn’t take them personally. I took your seemingly random extension of them personally.
G. Allan: “It was Paolo who said in essence you have to do this and that to be a scientist but believing in God requires unquestioning acceptance. So, I asked did unquestioning acceptance mean believers are uneducated, unstudied, careless, mindless twits.”
Which is a complete non-sequitor, as Paola has subsequently pointed out.
G. Allan: “If the majority of peers become prejudiced, so goes the science. It becomes to great a personal risk to go against the grain.”
What great personal risk? Scientists are going to come out and beat people up for disagreeing with the party line? No, wait, that’s creationists… (I’m thinking about the college professor back during the Dover mess who was beaten for trying to teach a class against ID.)
You’re missing the whole point of “antagonistic” in “antagonistic peer review”. All new ideas are *expected* to be beaten. You are mistaking systemic inertia for bias. But scientists can and do choose to stand against this all the time.
Nobody becomes a Great Scientist by redemonstrating the same ideas. Nobody will have their name equal to Einstein by supporting relativity. Nobody will be as famous as Darwin for coming up with yet another demonstration of evolution. If scientists want the respect and admiration of their peers, they MUST find some new idea, MUST get that idea through peer review. This is how the system works!
The real problem isn’t bias towards existing ideas on the part of science, it’s bias towards any new “sexy” theory that comes along. Young scientists are driven to want to make a mark, and that involves finding a new idea. The pressure to come up with something “new” sometimes overwhelms the pressure to come up with something accurate. That’s why we have “Aquatic ape” apologists (who posit an aquatic stage in human evolution to account for some traits of the human animal).
The aquatic ape hypothesis has no acceptance among mainstream anthropologists. Despite this, articles supporting it continue to be published, the scientists supporting it are not suffering unduly for doing so (no great personal risk). Sure, it’s considered a bit of a joke, but they continue to practice as scientists, doing studies, receiving grant money, etc.
And maybe someday they’ll even come up with something convincing! You never know! Alfred Wegener suggested the continents moved around despite being solid rock. Nobody wanted to swallow that one either, but look how it turned out.
G. Allan: “Yes, I am saying I believe this pressure may exist in evolutionary theory as this theory is protected with religious fervor.”
It is protected FROM religious fervor. The degree to which it is protected is simply proportional (actually, far less than it should be) to the amount of threat the theory is under from the irrational. Other theories that are attacked by anti-science forces are responded to in the same way. Doctors line up to defend medicine from new age and “alternative” quacks. The only reason you don’t see the same vehemence in defending the spherical earth is because flat-earthers don’t pose a real threat, being a minority in a minority in a minority among creationists. THEY don’t have the power to change the laws to favor the teaching of nonsense in schools.
Evolution’s status among biologists is no greater than quantum physics or relativity to physicists. Those are questioned all the time. If evolution isn’t, it’s only because nobody has any other propositions to account for the evidence. Me, I’d love one. Makes things more fun!
G. Allan: “As you may have surmised, I am a believer of the Christian God and I, therefore, believe his word.”
No, you believe what men have asserted about His word. You have nothing but faith in men to lead you to believe otherwise. This is why Bibliolatry is considered a heresy in the Catholic church.
G. Allan: “It says in Romans 1:20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisivle nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). Therefore, I have some expectation science ought be able to find at least one thing that is not contrary to believers and announce it.”
You can just as well expect to find that mustard seeds are the smallest of all seeds. The Bible (Mark 4:31) says so. Too bad they aren’t.
But, luckily for you, the Bible is not the founding document of Christianity. That would be the Nicean Creed, and it says nothing about the Bible being literal, God’s word, or even existing, since it didn’t at the time. “The” Bible is the third major revision of the selection of books “officially” designated as “correct”. Why do you believe this selection and not the earlier ones? Why don’t you believe in any of the minor selections and revisions? Again, you have nothing but faith in men guiding you here, not faith in God.
G. Allan: “And, that would probably not even be debated if evolutionary science was not forced upon the children of those who do not believe they or their children are a part of the ape family.”
Is spherical earth forced on students? Plate tectonics? Physics? Schools forcing facts on students, how horrible!
There are innumerable people even today who believe the earth is flat or a hollow sphere with us on the inside. They have the facts forced on them as well. I’m sorry you regard this as unfortunate.
G. Allan: “We do not teach children every scientific theory in existance, but, we make sure they are taught this one.”
More non-sequitor. We don’t teach every scientific theory, but we do teach every cornerstone of each of the sciences. You cannot teach biology without evolution anymore than you can teach cosmology without the Big Bang. Schools may not teach the standing-wave theory of spiral galaxies, but it’s just not on the same scale.
G. Allan: “And, if any one mentions maybe it should not be taught, it is the scientific community that pitches a fit and insists this theory be forced down the throat of all.”
Again, for shame, demanding the centerpiece of all biological thought be taught in biology! Next they’ll be wanting to teach 2+2=4 in math class.
G. Allan: “I personally believe in evolution to a certain extent exactly because of the scripture I quoted to you.”
Not because of, say, evidence? Pity.
G. Allan: “{Snip preaching}”
Very nice just-so story, but nothing to do with science. I can get moral lessons from gravity if I want, but gravity isn’t a moral issue.
G. Allan: “But, I also believe this science is overdone or overblown. Don’t have time to go into that now and it may not be worthwhile to go into it because after all IMAO”
That’s okay. Just assert and run.
G. Allan: “Moving along to the 50-50 chance. My reference to Paolo on this was to say respect should be shown for the other side, no matter what side you are on because they have just as much chance of being right.”
And my point was you do NOT have an equal chance of being right. Thanks for ignoring it.
Here’s an example, guess right now whether it is raining where I am or not.
You don’t have a 50/50 chance of being right. The two options are not equal. No place in the world has a truly 50/50 rain chance on any one day. You just have two options and YOU DO NOT KNOW the chances. Where I live, it may be a 30% rain chance today. It might be 60%. You don’t know. Ignorance of the chance does not equate to 50/50.
G. Allan: “Quick question about the creationists you speak to. Are they simply believers in the biblical account of creation or are they the current creation scientists who have not evolved into evolution scientists as the creation scientists of old did? I probably will not have time to check back to find your answer until next week.”
I’ve already answered this. The current crop of “creation scientists” have rejected not only 150 years of evolutionary thought, but 300 years of creation science. The dominant creationist model 250 years ago was Progressive Creation, accounting for the fossil layers with a sequence of destruction and recreation events of which Noah’s Flood was only the most recent. This remained the dominant model until replaced by modern geology.
The current creationists embrace some variety of flood geology. This was already regarded as very silly 300 years ago. They are atavisms not only to science, but to creationism, their arguments would be considered juvenile and long rejected by the creationists of 250 years ago.
They are not scientists at all. All the major creationist organizations REQUIRE you to swear an oath of allegiance before you join, not only to support creationism in general, but to support that organizations specific subvariety. That’s not science. Any scientific organization that tried to require belief in evolution would be panned overnight by scientists.
G. Allan: “Previously you {Paolo} has said comparing the Bible with Evolutionary Science is like comparing DiVinci with a palm reader. Apparently you think science and the bible are not compatible. I assume you mean Science is now, but the bible is ancient history and not relevant.”
You do have a huge problem with reading things into what other people say, G. They are two different things with two different purposes. That makes them incomparable. You yourself said as much. My bank account isn’t comparable to my account at Books-a-million. They serve two different purposes. That doesn’t mean one is real and one is fake. That doesn’t mean one is out of date and irrelevant while the other is In and Important. It means that they are sufficiently different that there is no point in comparing them. I don’t draw interest on Books-A-Million, I don’t get a discount on books from my bank.
G. Allan: “I would like to tell you a few things. The Bible may be ahead of science: Recent scientific (medical) has just recently made a few passages in the bible possible and understandable. First, the bible speaks of the “virgin birth” as most people know it. We now have been shown surrogacy by science which shows how this was possible.”
The only virgin birth recorded by scientists among vertebrates is parthenogenesis. This results in the mother cloning herself. Jesus was not a woman, so not a clone of Mary, so not parthenogenesis.
But I have to ask, isn’t the whole point of the word “miracle” that it isn’t supposed to be possible in the normal course of events? What’s the point of a “miracle” that’s possible? “And Jesus said, ‘Let the sun rise at 6:53 AM on April 24th, just like it has every April 24th for the past few million years’, and it was so and his followers said, ‘Bugger this, I’m sleeping in.’”
G. Allan: “The Bible says Jesus was with God and was God and became flesh. This is flowery language, but sort of sounds like clonning. In short Jesus could have been God cloned into an earthly body, carried to birth in the womb of a surrogate Mary.”
God has DNA? God has internal organs? Without such, it’s not cloning.
G. Allan: “This was done the creative power of God, rather than a physical implant as humans do. But this concept of clonning and surrogacy appears to be in the bible approx. 2000 years before it appears in science.”
The concept of cloning doesn’t occur at all. The concept in the Bible is fatherhood, which had been a part of science, such as it existed, for 6000 years at the time.
G. Allan: “Also, science says everything came out of the water (paraphrase)”
No, everything came out of a singularity expanding into its own space-time.
G. Allan: “In the account of creation the bible says this: ….and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be firmament in the midst of the water and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the frimament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament and it was so. God called the firmament Heaven and God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appears: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering together of the water called he Seas.”
Nothing firm there at all, is there? Where is this firmament?
See, this is the problem with latter-day Bible/Science reconciliation of this sort. The ancient Hebrew believed the sky was a solid metal dome with windows in it that God could open to let the “waters above the firmament” fall down upon a flat earth. They wrote into the Bible that the sky was a solid dome “firmament” with windows. They wrote that the Earth was flat. Here you are, 6000 or so years later, trying to pretend that when the Hebrew who believed in a metal dome wrote about a metal dome, they actually meant something else entirely!
G. Allan: “So, the bible and science are not far apart on the beginning of things.”
I don’t see any similarity. You’ve managed to mangle both the Bible and science to the detriment of both.
G. Allan: “You should read the book of Revelations if you believe in the global warming theory.”
Have done. I tend to agree with young Martin Luthor that the thing should have been thrown out of the Bible entirely. That he gave into political expedience and left it in when he had the opportunity to kick the thing out is a disappointment.
You did know that Martin Luthor included Revelations in the Protestant Bible primarily because its imagery was too important to dump rather than because he thought it was holy or scripture, right? If he’d stuck to his guns, the King James Bible would be without it to this day.
Understand what this means, G. The selection of books in the Protestant Bible is the work of ONE MAN. One HUMAN BEING. This was the third major selection of books to put in the Bible (the first two being the Roman and Greek Orthodox Catholic Bibles). They were also selected by human beings. Which one of these selections is divinely inspired, G.? Why do you think that particular version of the Bible is divine and not the others? Which men to you set your faith in inerrancy on?
And that’s not even getting into the Apocrypha, the Book of the Mormon, or any of the innumerable minor listings that never gained wide acceptance.
G. Allan: “Science says the earth was perfect until mankind sinned (big oil and modern living)”
And now you go WAY over the deep end. Science says NOTHING of the sort. Modern living is the best it has ever been, at least if you go by life-spans. (Real life spans, not those recorded in the Bible, which don’t match the archaeological record anywhere on the planet.) Most of human history was spent with a life-span of 30 being typical. We’ve more than doubled that today. People try and blame increased cancer rates on chemicals and industry, but these are usually false. The simple fact is, mutations accumulate over your lifetime. If you live long enough, you will get cancer. It’s that simple. The only reason cancer is now common is because we now regularly get old enough to get it regularly!
Life was never perfect. NEVER. Big oil and modern living did not give us polio, smallpox, crusades, women as chattel, slavery, arthritis, or any of the other ills of human history. Modern living has done away with them.
Live was never remotely perfect, but it’s getting better all the time.