Re: Birdbrain: Charles Darwin's Atheist Roots

John Harshman wrote:
Steven J. wrote:

On Dec 28, 11:50 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Jason Spaceman wrote:

>From the article:
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Arguing with the Darwin/atheist crowd can be quite wearisome, in that
they challenge everything and one must maintain a vast library of
information to back up any comment made. Take for example the comment
I made during the great Darwin battle where I asked ``why did all the
dynosaurs become birds`` and His Holiness P.Z. Myers snottily replied
``they didn`t BECOME birds, they already were!``.
What is the probability that Myers ever said any such thing? It would
merely be compounding error on error.

The actual exchange is reproduced below:

BIRDNOW: Speaking of Dinosaurs, why are they all gone? Dinosaurs came
in all sizes, some quite small and nimble. Birds are the last remnants
of the beasts which once ruled the Earth. Why? Granted, the large ones
were unfit to survive, but the small ones should have been able to
adapt without having to develop flight. We should still see some of
the smaller ones like Procompsognathus. They were every bit as nimble,
as fit, to survive as their mammalian rivals. Yet they are gone. Why
did they all turn into birds? Evolutionary theory suggests that the
surviving dinosaurs should have scattered in all directions
genetically after their extinction. They didn`t; they went in only one
direction, while mammals evolved to fill their former niches.

MYERS: The best current explanation for the absence of the dinosaurs
is a catastrophic extinction event triggered by a massive meteor
impact. The effects of the impact had long term ecological effects
that destroyed most species on the planet. All of the dinosaurs except
one lineage, a group that led to the birds and that evolved tens of
millions of years before the end of the Cretaceous, were killed. They
did not survive. There were no scattered bands of survivors that all
independently evolved into birds. The 'dinosaurs' that survived the
extinction were already birds.

BIRDNOW: (My point exactly, Dr.! You keep doing my work for me!)

<http://cmbirdblog.blogspot.com/>

Birdnow wrote "why did they all turn into birds," when he meant "why
did only the birds, of all the small maniraptorans, survive?" He then
blames P.Z. Myers for answering the question he asked rather than the
one he meant. It's actually an interesting question, to which I would
like an answer, although I don't see why the inability to answer the
question is supposed to be a fatal flaw for evolutionary theory.

So Birdnow began confused and remains confused despite all efforts by PZ
to fix him. We will probably never now why all the particular species
that became extinct in the K-T event did so. There was almost certainly
a stochastic component. All non-avian dinosaurs and some birds went
extinct. It may be as simple as birds being, at the time, more diverse
than other small theropods.

I think Birdnow is also making the mistake of thinking that *all* known dinosaur species went extinct at the KT boundary. I don't think he realizes that most of the dinosaur species we think of were already extinct, or in decline during the late Cretaceous.

It seems to be a common misunderstanding in Creationist circles that conventional science thinks that all dinosaur species were killed at the end of the Cretaceous. The idea that different dinosaur species lived and died over millions of years doesn't seem to have sunk in.




Now, of course I
understood that, and he knew I did, but he was splitting hairs to
undermine my ``canards`` (these guys LOVE that word!) He also
objected to my characterization of DNA as ``composed`` of RNA, despite
the fact that it is regularly modified into RNA in cells.
!

Indeed.

Maybe someone should tell him. Again.

I wonder where he got the idea that DNA is "composed" of RNA, and that DNA is modified into RNA.




[snip]

If they are to be loyal to their own principle,
the Darwinists should allow, nay insist, that Intelligent Design be
taught along with their theory.
Can anyone tell what principle he's talking about here?

Perhaps he could, if you asked at his blog, although I'm not
guaranteeing that. At a guess, in the Scopes trial, "Darwinists" were
arguing for the right of teachers to present new, unproven but
interesting scientific theories despite the wishes of politicians,
therefore, they ought, to be consistent, support teachers teaching
new, unprove but interesting theories, despite the wishes of pretty
much every scientist conversant with the relevant facts. Admittedly,
this explanation might tend to founder on the points that ID is
neither new nor, at present point, an actual theory.

Nor was evolution, in 1925, either new or unproven.

It also wasn't a case of the State setting the curriculum. It was outlawing any scientific theory that contradicted the Bible. That was an obvious violation of the 1st amendment.


DJT

.

Relevant Pages

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