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An Exercise In Disproving Evolution

barehl

Master Poster
barehl
Joined
Jul 8, 2013
Messages
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Let's see if we can use Creationist logic to disprove Evolutionary Theory. Let's start with a common assertion:

Intermediate forms cannot exist because they wouldn't be adapted. Adaptations are only useful in their final form.

1.) Elephants have fully adapted, long trunks. You won't find anything like an elephant with a short trunk.



2.) Giraffes have fully adapted long necks. You won't find anything like a giraffe with a short neck.



3.) Fish are adapted for swimming; salamanders are adapted for walking on land. You won't find anything like a half-fish half-salamander. Let's say it had one pair of legs and a tail how, could it move? If it still had gills, how could it breathe?



4.) Scientists claim that squid evolved from mollusks like snails. Yet, you won't find anything halfway in between a snail and a squid. Imagine a snail with tentacles.



5.) Well, fine, there are animals like this now. But, what evidence is there that they ever existed in the past?



6.) What about trilobites? Scientists claim that these were everywhere in the fossil record. Why aren't they still around?



7.) Well, maybe it works for something simple but it couldn't work for anything complex. There's no way that an animal could gradually develop the ability to fly.



8.) That's only a minor adaptation. Frogs jump and have webbed feet. This one just has bigger webbed feet so that it can go farther.



9.) That couldn't have evolved. There is no intermediate form.



10.) That doesn't count. Lizards have legs; snakes don't. There is nothing in between a lizard and a snake.



11.) You still haven't come up with a crocoduck.

http://s2.djyimg.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2014/02/Shoebill-4.jpg



Edited by zooterkin: 
Changed hotlinks to normal links. Please see Rule 5.
 
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I didn't look at the spoilers because I'm waiting for the movie to come out. I hope they cast Kevin Sorbo again.
 
Unfortunately none of these are intermediate forms in the way that creationists would accept (at least not the creationists I've debated this with). They're also not intermediate forms in the sense that biologists use the term (with the possible exception of the okapi). And if a creationist asked you why trilobites aren't around any longer, and you showed pictures of horseshoe crabs, the creationist would be justified to laugh at you.
 
Kotatsu said:
Unfortunately none of these are intermediate forms in the way that creationists would accept (at least not the creationists I've debated this with)...
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If those are the same creationists that argue that radionuclides decayed at different rates in the past (faster) then we already know there's nothing they'd actually accept that gave evidence against their view, anyway.
 
Kotatsu said:
Unfortunately none of these are intermediate forms in the way that creationists would accept (at least not the creationists I've debated this with). They're also not intermediate forms in the sense that biologists use the term (with the possible exception of the okapi). And if a creationist asked you why trilobites aren't around any longer, and you showed pictures of horseshoe crabs, the creationist would be justified to laugh at you.
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Don't care about why the creationist would not accept the claim of intermediates, but why wouldn't biologists? And since horseshoe crabs are likely the closest extant relatives of trilobites why would a creationist be justified in laughing?
 
Diogenes said:
If those are the same creationists that argue that radionuclides decayed at different rates in the past (faster) then we already know there's nothing they'd actually accept that gave evidence against their view, anyway.
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No, these are the same kind of creationists as Kleinman, who was very active here around... 2009, maybe? Creationists that are almost "professional" in their creationism, and also have a fairly good understanding of the animal world. They still wouldn't accept anything as evidence against their ideology, but would at least know enough to dismiss most of these examples with justifications that would actually hold up.

RecoveringYuppy said:
Don't care about why the creationist would not accept the claim of intermediates, but why wouldn't biologists?
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Because these are not intermediates between what the purported extreme points are.

If anyone, either creationist or sane, were to ask me if I could show any evidence of trunk-evolution in elephants (implicitly going from non-trunked mammals to present-day elephants), and I showed a picture of a tapir, this would prove absolutely nothing. The fact that short trunks exist in present-day members of distant relatives of elephants doesn't prove that there were ever short-trunked elephant-like ancestors of elephants. Showing that short trunks have evolved from non-trunks in one group (which I assume is the case with the tapirs and the reason a picture of one is included) does not in any way establish that anything similar happened in the evolutionary lineage that lead to extant elephants. They may have had long trunks since they were rat-like, or since before they even had fur, or been descended from fish-like organisms with long trunks.

RecoveringYuppy said:
And since horseshoe crabs are likely the closest extant relatives of trilobites why would a creationist be justified in laughing?
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The imagined creationist asks, "Why aren't trilobites around?" and is shown a picture of something extant that is not a trilobite. If the creationist knowns or can google this information, he/she is justified at laughing at someone who evidently believes that things that look the same are the same. Whether or not they are close relatives is irrelevant to the question the creationist has asked.
 
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@Kotatsu

You seem to be missing the points.

Re "extrement points". The animals presented prove that intermediate forms can be useful. No one claimed they were the intermediate form or that even that the intermediate forms looked like those creatures. They show that intermediates are useful and actually exist.

Re "trilobites". No one said horseshoe crabs are trilobites. But they demonstrates the valid answer to the question. Surely you can figure out what that is. And if someone were actually answering a creationist they wouldn't stop at just showing them the photo without explanation.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Re "extrement points". The animals presented prove that intermediate forms can be useful. No one claimed they were the intermediate form or that even that the intermediate forms looked like those creatures. They show that intermediates are useful and actually exist.
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They prove nothing of the sort, as these animals are not intermediate forms between the extreme points.

The short trunk of a tapir shows precisely this: for tapirs short trunks are useful and actually exist. Is the same true for elephants? In the context of the present discussion we still have no idea. The fact that short trunks are useful and actually exist in one evolutionary lineage does not in any way show that the same is true for a different lineage. In these cases, the imagined creationist of the OP is actually perfectly justified in saying that the photos show organisms in their "final form", and dismiss these examples immediately, as I am doing here (despite not being a creationist).

It is also worth noting that all the animals presented are extant, meaning that they are only intermediate forms in a very precise technical sense, but they are not actually intermediate forms (yet), and none of their morphological adaptations are actually intermediate (yet).

RecoveringYuppy said:
Re "trilobites". No one said horseshoe crabs are trilobites. But they demonstrates the valid answer to the question. Surely you can figure out what that is. And if someone were actually answering a creationist they wouldn't stop at just showing them the photo without explanation.
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The imaginary creationist in the OP asks exactly:
barehl said:
6.) What about trilobites? Scientists claim that these were everywhere in the fossil record. Why aren't they still around?
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The only valid answer to this question is: they went extinct in the Permian. The reason for this is apparently not fully known yet, but they have left no living descendants.

Any answer that involves showing convergent evolution of relatives of trilobites is not a valid answer to the creationist's question, except in the case where the horseshoe crabs are included to somehow imply that these organisms out-competed the trilobites, and that is why the trilobites are not around, that would be a valid answer given that this scenario can be supported by palaeontological evidence.

But please feel free to explain how the picture of a horseshoe crab is supposed to counter the imagined creationist's question about why trilobites are no longer around.
 
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Kotatsu, welcome to the wonderful world of questioning JREF skeptical dogma. The logic is as follows: Creationists are wrong, therefore their arguments are wrong, therefore all we need do is find ways to prove them wrong. It's dogmatic nonsense under the guise of rationality.

For example: showing an extant animal as proof that an extinct animal is still around is on the same intellectual level as "If humans evolved from monkeys, why are theres till monkeys?" The honest answer is that we don't know exactly why trilobites went extinct. People are working on that. We know that the end-Permian mass extinctions were, in agregate, the worst ecological catastrophy the world has ever faced, but the specific mechanisms for killing that particular group are simply not known. Showing a completely different animal as an answer to this question can only be justified by an ignorance of biology or an unwillingness to accept basic facts.

It's the same with showing a cobra's neck flaps as an intermediate form for something in an entirely different taxa. Such an argument is akin to someone saying "Those people can't be your grandparents, your parents would have to be your kids" and you saying "Look at this--I have similar ear lobes with this entirely different couple from another country!" At best, such is an example of lizards more easily evolving certain traits than others; at worst, it's a serious non-sequitor that illustrates a deep failure to understand biology.

The others are just as bad, if not worse.

RecoveringYuppy said:
Re "extrement points". The animals presented prove that intermediate forms can be useful.
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I would love to see how a complete failure to provide a single intermediate form in any way demonstrates that intermediate forms can be useful.

The worst part is, it's lazy. There are ample intermediate forms in the fossil record and in extant species to use. Ring species are pretty much all intermediate forms (excepting only the end populations). Animal husbandry provides additional well-documented intermediate forms. While we don't have the fossils at the base of hte Tree of Life yet, we have ample fossils for Mammalia, Dinosauria, Molluska, Decapoda, and numerous other taxa showing intermediate forms of taxa of various taxonomic ranks, including between two species. This stuff isn't hard to come by.

Re "trilobites". No one said horseshoe crabs are trilobites. But they demonstrates the valid answer to the question.
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Not even a little. The question is "Why is such an apparently successful group not around anymore?" NO living animal AT ALL can provide such an answer, unless that animal directly caused the extinction (showing a picture of humans answers "Why are there no dodo birds?", but that's about it). The only valid way to examine these questions is to look at why the animal went extinct; looking for modern relatives in no way even comes close to pretending to answer the question.

To be fair, though, Kotatsu did miss the point. The point had nothing to do with scientific or even rational answers to the questions. It's mockery, pure and simple, and often at the expense of scientific accuracy. If this were in the Humor subforum, yeah, it'd be mildly amusing and it wouldn't be so wildly inappropriate. I'd have chuckled. But this is a SCIENCE subforum, and therefore it is incumbant upon us to present at least a semblance of rational analysis. Presenting these answers under the guise of science seriously undermines the credibility of science in the eyes of....well, anyone sane.
 
Kotatsu said:
The short trunk of a tapir shows precisely this: for tapirs short trunks are useful and actually exist.
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So you got the point. And apparently are not appreciating the joke.
Kotatsu said:
But please feel free to explain how the picture of a horseshoe crab is supposed to counter the imagined creationist's question about why trilobites are no longer around.
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I hinted at it earlier and you just gave me the full reason. But the picture isn't meant to counter a creationist argument. It's a bit of a joke with a fair amount of the true answer in it.
 
Dinwar said:
I would love to see how a complete failure to provide a single intermediate form in any way demonstrates that intermediate forms can be useful.
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They, or at least many of them, are intermediate in exactly the way many creationists claim is impossible.

These are meant to address creationists claims about intermediates. And, hint, there is a bit of a joking nature to the OP.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
So you got the point.
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There is so much wrong with this....

First, all it proves is that a short truck CAN BE useful. It in no way proves that a short trunk WAS useful. It can't--extant tapirs aren't part of elephant evolution, for the same reason that you're not part of your grandparent's ancestry.

Second, it doesn't demonstrate that the advantages conveyed to tapirs by virtue of short trunks in any way relate to elephants. It could very easily be convergent evolution.

IF we could prove that tapirs and elephants share trunks due to their common ancestor having a trunk, we MIGHT be able to say tapirs are an intermediate form (I'm not aware of any such proof, but I'm always willing to learn). However, this is complicated by the fact that tapirs maintained a more primative state while elephants did not. Also, you've sort of left out that whole "prove that this is a shared ancestrial trait" thing.

It's a bit of a joke with a fair amount of the true answer in it.
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There is NO truth to it, merely perpetuations of gross misunderstandings.

But thank you for admitting that this thread is humor, and nothing to do with science. As humor, it falls flat for me, but I acknowledge that humor is personal. The important thing is to present it AS humor, and presenting it in this forum is the wrong way to do that.
 
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