Re: Bombshell on bird origins

John Wilkins wrote:

Bill Hudson wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:

Bill Hudson wrote:

UC wrote:

Bill Hudson wrote:
(snip)

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/1997/152-20/15220-10.pdf

They were wrong 9 years ago, they were wrong 4 years ago, and they're
still wrong today, so says the vast majority of their peers.

I neither said nor implied that old claims are false. I merely pointed
out that the 'bombshell' is old news: Feduccia and Burke have been
making this exact claim in print for at least nine years, and that
their peers (if you bothered to read the sciencenews.org link) have
been refuting those claims for just as long.

This is not a 'bombshell', and in another post I linked to an article
in Science from January of 2005 which states in the summary
"Researchers have concluded that the three digits in bird wings
correspond to the three digits in dinosaurs' forelimbs." (The entire
article can be purchased for $10, should you care to actually research
the issue).

Feduccia and Burke appear to be emotinally tied to the idea that 'Birds
are not Dinosaurs', and are selectively ignoring evidence that
contradicts that opinion. Back in 1996 they were also claiming that
Birds are not Dinosaurs because there are no feathered dinosaurs. I
haven't heard that particular claim recently.

The claim "Birds are Dinosaurs" is linguistically unjustified.

Not this again!

The claim that 'Birds are not Dinosaurs' is scientifically unjustified.
Birds are dinosaurs. Period. End of story. The End. Fini.

"linguistically unjustified" means diddly squat. The argument is so
weak that it is a tacit admission that the scientific basis of the
claim that birds *are* dinosaurs is well justified.

Buh bye.


It ought to be pointed out that the BAND crowd aren't making a linguistic
claim either. They are making a substantive claim (one which depends on
treatment of evidence and not the "meanings" of words) that is subjectible to
testing (and has been found wanting by their peers).

Feduccia is in the unenviable position of being so tied to his claim
by his past arguments that he cannot abandon them even in the face of
overwhelming contradictory evidence. I'm sure he believes (or did
believe) that birds are a separate branch from dinosaurs, but it
appears to be a position taken out of emotion and not reason and
evidence.


Which appears to be UC's rationale as well.

He seems to think that words are fixed forever, that science doesn't inform
ordinary usage (which means that "planets" do not orbit the sun, of course),
that a term can only mean what it once meant, and that words determine states
of affairs....

More to the point and less conducive to UC's weaseling, Earth is not a
planet, since it doesn't have the traditional defining characteristic of
planets: observed to move against the fixed stars.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Birds arent dinosaurs, dinosaurs were birds!
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  • Re: Meteor strike may not have killed dinos/demise began earlier
    ... > million years before the disastrous asteroid impact traditionally blamed ... > for the dinosaurs' extinction. ... > Popular theory says that birds and mammals were only able to flourish on ... > after 25 years they have still not provided a single piece of evidence ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: The Myth of Bird Evolution
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    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Vernacular and Linnaean Naming (Was: KT boundary event)
    ... If you want to say "birds are dinosaurs" it shows you have no ... If you mean can scientists communicate clearly amongst themselves then ... The poor standards of language eductaion have ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Vernacular and Linnaean Naming (Was: KT boundary event)
    ... If you want to say "birds are dinosaurs" it shows you have no ... If you're talking about the communication of scientific information to ... If you mean can scientists communicate clearly amongst themselves then ...
    (talk.origins)