Re: Invulnerable logic [Was:Re: How Our Brains Ignore Unpleasant

Evopeach wrote:
On Jan 21, 9:02 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Evopeach wrote:
OnJan16, 9:14 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Evopeach wrote:
OnJan15, 8:13 pm, Rupert Morrish <rup...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ye Old One wrote:
On Tue, 15Jan2008 15:01:55 -0800 (PST), Evopeach
<keaton1...@xxxxxxxxx> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
So I take that as you have no concept as to how a dinosaur evolved
avian lungs from reptilian lungs..that's what I thought.
It took them many millions if years.
If you think yelling off topic is effective why don't you just make
farting noises.
We leave that to you.
And William Dembski
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Oh not too much different or difficult to bridge that is except that
all other vertebrates (like dinosaurs) respiratory systems involve
bronchi and avioli with air being moved bi-directionally through the
same passage. While birds that fly need much more oxygen and have one
way tubes through which air moves in one direction during both
inhalation and expiration thus giving a steady supply of air to the
parabronchi. This is true for quite diverse sorts of birds as in
humming and hawks. Then there's that minor difference in the bird lung
being firmly attached to the body and not expanding and contracting.
Shall we discuss the heart differences, intestinal differences, and
then the problem of the syrinx, which has no homogolous structure in
reptiles whatsoever.
What I'm trying to figure out is how you know that other dinosaurs
didn't have structures like this, and how you know that Archaeopteryx did.
What you are making here is the classical argument from incredulity. You
can't figure out how one structure could turn into another, and so
evolution is false. But evolution is not limited by your ability to
comprehend it, or even mine. If we don't know how something happened,
all that tell us is that we don't know how it happened. We know from
other evidence, i.e. the evidence of phylogeny, that it did happen
somehow. Now conceivably the necessary changes were poofed into
existence by God personally installing mutations into some species'
genomes (though I doubt it), but this doesn't change the pattern of
descent that we see. You are conflating multiple questions.
No I was not I am asking continually for an evidentiary showing in all
these matters consistent with CURRENT knowledge and not the
anachronistic just so stories, scattered bone fragments, and bald,
bold assertions. We now have a good insight into the way life works at
the cellular level , it's processes, machinery, codes, and systematic
integration. Thus it is not at all an argument from personal
incredulity but rather an emphatic request for demonstration of
proposed evolutionary events at the level of understanding now
possessed by the community.
This is nonsense. We now know that atoms are made of quarks and leptons,
but you don't ask for an understanding of a bouncing ball on the level
of quarks and leptons, and if you did none would be forthcoming. And yet
we understand bouncing balls fairly well.

We certainly can understand the concept of elasticity, the degree of
elasticity corrolated with material properties of elastomers and the
combined retention energy of confined air molecules and all such
aspects of classical physics associated with bouncing balls.

And we certainly can understand the concept, inheritance, fixation, branching trees, and all such aspects of evolutionary theory associated with common descent.

One would hardly have to appeal to nuclear physics to in theory
elucidate the Rm and NS event sequences that give rise to proposed or
supposed evolutionary events given the understanding of celluar
operations and the genome sequencing, both of which are available.

Analogies just whizz right past you, don't they? Now in fact there are relatively few cases in which we can associate particular phenotypic differences with particular genotypic differences, or even with cellular processes. In time, with enough genomes sequenced and enough experiments, we probably will have a much greater understanding. But a detailed understanding of past selection? Doubtful. What you ask for is probably impossible.

However, the point is that it's unnecessary in order to know quite a bit about evolution. We could understand Newtonian mechanics before we had any inkling of an atomic theory; we can understand common descent quite well with no inkling of natural selection, much less the selective value of particular mutations.

Nobody is talking about just-so stories, or scattered bone fragments
except you.

And I may add that that old canard is logically flawed. If I tell you
I just jumped from the Port of L.A. to Catalina Island under my own
power, I would consider you mentally deficient if you were not
incredulous of such a claim until demonstrated and observed or
described in detail by biological and physical processes consistent
with accepted knowledge.
Speaking of old canards, you are repeating yourself. So I'll repeat my
last response to this. I'm not telling you I jumped. I'm telling you I
got there somehow. How I got there is a separate question from whether I
got there. See?

Except if asked you if you took a boat or a plane and you said,
neither, I walked, or jumped, or flew unassisted, I would conclude
either you're crazy or a liar and you were possibly born on Catalina
and never left.

To belabor the analogy, I have photographs of myself in LA, and photographs of myself on Catalina, and I even have a picture of myself on a boat. I make no claims about walking or jumping or flying. Now what?

.

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