Different Opinions....Who is right?

[Deeje]

You implied it. But, okay. Why was it absolutely necessary that your god introduce evil into his world? Was this the only way he could have created it? Was that a limitation? If not, then he is evil himself by creating evil. Or did the evil being exist without the help and approval of your god? Which would make the evil being a god at least equal to your god....eternal, no need for a creator.

It is a rule of science that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Evil exists as an equal opposite of good. God did not create it as a way to do harm, but it exists as a simple principle of science.

God never tried to keep any other ‘opposite’ from human experience....except evil.

But because he created his intelligent creatures with free will, he could not arbitrarily force them not to know about it....instead, he placed a penalty on that knowledge that should have dissuaded them from even wanting to know about it. But they were convinced by a third party that the penalty was invalid and that knowing good and evil for themselves would benefit them....even going so far as to suggest that it would make them “like God”.

They chose to know it for themselves, and here we are. Was it beneficial? Did it make them like God? Was God right to withhold that knowledge and keep it from his children? Imagine the world without evil in it....that’s the world we should have had, but free will is a loaded weapon in the wrong hands. That world was taken away because of what those original rebels chose to do.

We needed to learn this lesson the hard way apparently, but those who get to enjoy the restoration of God’s original purpose, once this object lesson is over, will know that disobedience to His commands will always have dire consequences. They will not be in a hurry to go there again.

 

[gnostic]

@Hockeycowboy

Behe’s paper on Irreducible Complexity and his book “Darwin’s Black Box”, often used ANALOGY, as if biological structures and processes as if they were “machines”.

If you are going to write a hypothesis that are biological, then you would focus on what actually there, biologically, eg protein, cells, DNA/RNA, chromosomes, tissues, blood, etc. You would not use ANALOGY of machines in hypothesis.

Analogy may be suitable for religion or for philosophy, which is ok to use in allegory, parables and similes, but using analogy proposal for scientific papers, it would be inaccurate, since you would be comparing one thing with something completely different.

In the real world, machines are man-made, so it would require someone to design the machines, and someone to manufacture the machines, someone to ship them, distribute them, sell them, use them, maintain them, and so on. At every points there are real people involved with these machines, you can track down all the staff, including designers, operators, distributors, the executives of the company, sellers, buyers, and you get their names, addresses, contact numbers, drivers’ licenses, social security numbers, where they receive their education and their qualifications, look at their work history, if they being in services, their rank, find out about who their parents, siblings, if they have spouse or not, children or not.

All these information about a person, can be found and tracked.

Science is about evidence that can be observed, measured and tested.

But how would you track an invisible and nonexistent Intelligent Designer or Creator or God?

How would go about observing Designer or God? Can you measure and test this God or Designer?

If the bacterial flagellum were parts made out of different machines, machines that were designed by this Designer, then Behe should have provide a mean or methodology of how one would test for the Designer.

This is one of the reasons why Irreducible Complexity failed to be falsifiable.

He is comparing on the one hand, biology, and the on hand, machine, they are unrelated to each other, so how does one test it?

The other reason is that in Behe’s IC model, he failed to provide procedures or instruction of how one would test his concept. Which is another reason why it is unfalsifiable.

Being unfalsifiable, Behe’s IC cannot even be considered to be a hypothesis.

A hypothesis is a set of falsifiable explanations.

Analogy isn't evidence.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That you say you are only aware of Dr. Behe, and do not know who Drs. Stephen Meyer or Douglas Axe or Jonathan Wells are, is revealing.

Yes. It reveals that I don't care for religious propaganda and get my science from actual scientific sources.
It also reveals that I don't care about "authorities" and only about the science.

It doesn't matter who said what. What matters is what is being said and how it stands up to scrutiny and evidence.

Apparently, you do not even know the opposition's leaders?

The sad truth is that creationists are no more "opposition" to evolutionary biology then stork theorists are to embryology.

Have ou heard of Dr. Günter Bechly?

No.

How can you claim to refute their science-based arguments, when you've never bothered to read them?

It's been a VERY long time since I've heared a creationist argument that I haven't already heared before. And none of them were science-based in a valid way. Every single one of them was rooted in either ignorance or misrepresentation.

If there were actual and valid science-based arguments, they'ld exist in the actual scientific literature.

The T3SS is an old argument, I see why you refer to the video...do you understand that it's outdated? From more recent research, it's quite obvious the secretory system came after the flagellum. So the origin of it remains unsolved through natural means.

"unsolved". There's the argument from ignorance in the making...

The point is that the clip offers a plausible way by which such structures can and do evolve. Which acts as a refutation of the silly and juvenile argument from ignorance known as "irreducible complexity".

Also note how never is there any positive evidence offered FOR IC or creationism or any other incarnation of it. It always consists of mere negative evidence of another model.

As if blowing holes in evolution, or pointing at gaps in knowledge of evolutionary history, would or could ever act as support FOR IC or creationism or whatever.

(And "Likely" isn't the language of empirical science.)​

Au contraire. In model building in empirical science, nothing is ever considered "proven" or "absolute". Instead, science is all about what is likely and unlikely.​

FYI, I'm not a YEC, so that issue doesn't apply.

It is of no consequence.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You couldn't? How hard did you look?

"3. INJECTISOME-T3SS DERIVED FROM FLAGELLAR ANCESTORS
The evolutionary relationship between the flagellum and the injectisome has been the subject of considerable debate. Flagella exist in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, while injectisomes have so far only been found in Gram-negative species, suggesting a flagellar T3SS as ancestor [24,54]. However, early phylogenetic studies suggested that both systems share a common ancestor, and have since evolved differently from each other [55]. With the ever-growing number of genome sequences [56,57], it became clear that flagellar components are almost always encoded on the bacterial chromosome and co-evolved with the rest of the genome to a certain degree [58,59], while the genes coding for the injectisome are often encoded on virulence plasmids or pathogenicity islands, and are more closely related to each other than their flagellar counterparts. They are distributed independently of the phylogeny of the respective species, and have probably been frequently transferred between species [38,55,60]. Latest analyses suggest that the ancestral T3SS was used for locomotion and was similar to current-day flagella, while modern injectisomes were derived through a series of gene losses and subsequent acquisitions via a non-flagellar ancestor that did not translocate proteins, leading to a protein translocation machinery [38] (figure 2)."

Excerpt from
Type III secretion systems: the bacterial flagellum and the injectisome

So your argument against the evolution of flagella, is a reference that further details the evolution of the flagella with more accuracy?

 

[cladking]

I am not interested in jettisoning all belief, just false ones.

I'm sorry but this isn't the way reality works.

It would be great if you could do this but we know nothing and have no way of separating good beliefs from bad beliefs. We are all trying. Science is just another tool to try to help in this quest but people are mistakenly adopting the tool as a new belief. Religion was the first tool in modern times for this job but it was adopted as a belief system as well.

Reality is logic and it obeys neither science nor religion. It doesn't even obey mathematics but since math is logic as well there are numerous correlations and correspondences with math.

So long as we believe we have all the answers we quit looking and we all start with the answer in the form of our beliefs. It's no miracle that science tends to progress from the observation of anomaly and their study. It is what we don't understand that leads us to answers. Of course people see their beliefs rather than anomaly so progress has always been so painfully slow. Now we're entering a new dark ages where anomaly will be hidden behind not just belief but dogma as well. This is the result of knowing everything and forcing it on everyone.

 

[osgart]

All beliefs are hypothetical, and not all beliefs can be tested. Religion likes to go into the realm of untestable beliefs. And the popular spokespeople for Science of today like to grapple with ultimate questions. So the two heads meet. I suppose the question is can religious people of today do effective science, or are they hindering progress? Or is this argument simply just wasting time?

Who's minds are changing? Or is this where people become more entrenched in what they already believe?

From what I have seen religion is dying in the west. But a resurgence isn't out of the question. Seems to me that the best place to fight it out is in politics and education.

American leadership is suffering, and it's the worst it has ever been. Are the ideologies of science and religion so contrary that it is irreconcilable? Why should religion and science talk to each other at all? Perhaps religion needs a healthy replacement to fill the void for religious people. Science seems to get caught up in being a movement, and ideological cause. What's the answer?

 

[cladking]

Well, this kind of thinking isn't helpful. It doesn't lead to useful ideas.

There is a reason that consciousness seems to affect experiment. I believe I have found it and a workaround.

There is an error in our metaphysics.

No, all faith-based thought is destructive to all reason and evidence...

So only religious beliefs interfere with science. Good to know.

Irrelevant. Did they come up with the same or different results? I don't need their interpretation if I can follow the math, just their results.

Half of aviation engineers in a very informal poll believe an airplane can't take off from a conveyor belt moving the opposite direction. Even 3% of physicists get it wrong.

What we believe IS our reality, but we still can't fly no matter how much we believe.


Each of us is a collection of beliefs and we each think our beliefs are the right beliefs. We see reality, experiment, and religion in terms of those beliefs.

 

[cladking]

All beliefs are hypothetical, and not all beliefs can be tested. Religion likes to go into the realm of untestable beliefs. And the popular spokespeople for Science of today like to grapple with ultimate questions. So the two heads meet. I suppose the question is can religious people of today do effective science, or are they hindering progress? Or is this argument simply just wasting time?

Who's minds are changing? Or is this where people become more entrenched in what they already believe?

From what I have seen religion is dying in the west. But a resurgence isn't out of the question. Seems to me that the best place to fight it out is in politics and education.

American leadership is suffering, and it's the worst it has ever been. Are the ideologies of science and religion so contrary that it is irreconcilable? Why should religion and science talk to each other at all? Perhaps religion needs a healthy replacement to fill the void for religious people. Science seems to get caught up in being a movement, and ideological cause. What's the answer?

I doubt there is an "answer" but we really should call a truce and all quit being holier than thou.

Science needs to learn its limitations if we're ever to get past the unified field theory. Even Atlas shrugged.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yeah, I noticed the "four" mistake too.
Then I remembered: in the Book of Enoch, it mentions Big Louis....he was Japheth’s black sheep brother. He showed up at the last minute.
Lol.

I don't believe it is allegory. Otherwise, how could the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3 include a fictional person?

You know, we may disagree, but I think we'd get to be good friends in person.

Wish you the best, stay safe!

PS: I saved your comments re: Genesis as allegory, from a few months back. I'm going to answer those bullet points eventually.

There is no rule that states that allegory cannot contain references to real people, places or events.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You couldn't? How hard did you look?

"3. INJECTISOME-T3SS DERIVED FROM FLAGELLAR ANCESTORS
The evolutionary relationship between the flagellum and the injectisome has been the subject of considerable debate. Flagella exist in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, while injectisomes have so far only been found in Gram-negative species, suggesting a flagellar T3SS as ancestor [24,54]. However, early phylogenetic studies suggested that both systems share a common ancestor, and have since evolved differently from each other [55]. With the ever-growing number of genome sequences [56,57], it became clear that flagellar components are almost always encoded on the bacterial chromosome and co-evolved with the rest of the genome to a certain degree [58,59], while the genes coding for the injectisome are often encoded on virulence plasmids or pathogenicity islands, and are more closely related to each other than their flagellar counterparts. They are distributed independently of the phylogeny of the respective species, and have probably been frequently transferred between species [38,55,60]. Latest analyses suggest that the ancestral T3SS was used for locomotion and was similar to current-day flagella, while modern injectisomes were derived through a series of gene losses and subsequent acquisitions via a non-flagellar ancestor that did not translocate proteins, leading to a protein translocation machinery [38] (figure 2)."

Excerpt from
Type III secretion systems: the bacterial flagellum and the injectisome

Interesting that you turn to the science you reject to support the science you reject.

The point that sort of fell out of your response is that the there exists functional structures that are reductions of the so called irreducible. Whether the more elaborate is the ancestor of the less is interesting, but is evidence against irreducible complexity, regardless.

If the flagellar motor is ancestral to the injectisome, then it also illustrates against the often misinformed claims about complexity as a condition of evolution. Clearly, this evidence reveals that complexity is a consequence of evolution and not a condition demanded by the theory of evolution. Sometimes evolution produces a reduction in complexity. Parasites, blind fish and other troglobitic organisms are excellent examples of the loss of complexity as a consequence of evolution.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Actually, it is necessary to jettison the god belief to do science properly. The scientist who can't leave his Sunday morning beliefs at home when he goes to work Monday will not be able to do science properly as the intelligent design people demonstrated. They brought a god belief to the lab and it caused them to do pseudoscience instead.

Most atheists are agnostic atheists, including me. We neither reject gods nor accept claims of their existence. There is no basis for doing either. That's what being agnostic means - recognizing that an idea hasn't been ruled in or out, and behaving accordingly by stating that the concept is unresolved rather than guessing and picking one answer or the other.



One can learn to think without faith or with false beliefs. It only requires evaluating ones conclusions using his beliefs and comparing them with reality. If they consistently match in a way not equaled by competing beliefs, the belief and all beliefs leading to it can be considered valid.

If one is applying a false belief unknowingly, he will come to wrong conclusions. If he is trained in critical thinking and interested in holding only correct ideas and weeding out any incorrect ones, he will investigate how that happened, and adjust his mental map accordingly. Do this for decades, and you will identify any false beliefs even if previously invisible.



I don't understand what problem you see. Species is a useful scientific construct. Why factor it out?



Why would you?

But here's a guy who would:

“If somewhere in the Bible I were to find a passage that said 2 + 2 = 5, I wouldn't question what I am reading in the Bible. I would believe it, accept it as true, and do my best to work it out and understand it."- Pastor Peter laRuffa



Being identical is irrelevant. The objects just need to be discrete. It is appropriate to believe that if one combines two discrete object with two more, he will have four items, whatever they are. If these were apples, they need not be identical, or even of the same color or variety.

Of course, one has to know where this fact can and cannot be applied. If one combines two discrete crowds with two more, he will not end up with four crowds - just one. And combining two gallons of water with two gallons of gasoline will not produce four full gallons of solution (or so I'm told).



If two people get different answers for the same calculation, at least one of them has made an error.



The success of science is all the evidence we need to know that the underlying assumptions that led to those ideas are correct. We're not looking for anything more from science. The magic trick of the Internet is all you need to know that whatever science led to its existence is correct.



We've lobotomized the faith lobe. That's why what we generate works.



Not to you. You are a faith based thinker. All I can offer is evidence and reasoned argument.



No.



I said that there is no evidence for the supernatural.



False equivalence. ‘Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining’



No, I do not. If there are unobserved parts of the universe, nobody knows about them yet.




"You stare into your high definition plasma screen monitor, type into your cordless keyboard then hit enter, which causes your computer to convert all that visual data into a binary signal that's processed by millions of precise circuits.

"This is then converted to a frequency modulated signal to reach your wireless router where it is then converted to light waves and sent along a large fiber optics cable to be processed by a super computer on a mass server.

"This sends that bit you typed to a satellite orbiting the earth that was put there through the greatest feats of engineering and science, all so it could go back through a similar pathway to make it all the way here to my computer monitor 15,000 miles away from you just so you could say, "Science is all a bunch of man made hogwash."- anon.



Exactly wrong. Bible prophecy is also useless.



Christianity has nothing to do with freedom. It's all about submission and obedience.

I agree, but I would not say that you have to jettison belief in order to do science. Individual belief can be retained by that scientist, just not used in the process of science.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It is a rule of science that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. Evil exists as an equal opposite of good. God did not create it as a way to do harm, but it exists as a simple principle of science.

God never tried to keep any other ‘opposite’ from human experience....except evil.

But because he created his intelligent creatures with free will, he could not arbitrarily force them not to know about it....instead, he placed a penalty on that knowledge that should have dissuaded them from even wanting to know about it. But they were convinced by a third party that the penalty was invalid and that knowing good and evil for themselves would benefit them....even going so far as to suggest that it would make them “like God”.

They chose to know it for themselves, and here we are. Was it beneficial? Did it make them like God? Was God right to withhold that knowledge and keep it from his children? Imagine the world without evil in it....that’s the world we should have had, but free will is a loaded weapon in the wrong hands. That world was taken away because of what those original rebels chose to do.

We needed to learn this lesson the hard way apparently, but those who get to enjoy the restoration of God’s original purpose, once this object lesson is over, will know that disobedience to His commands will always have dire consequences. They will not be in a hurry to go there again.

Is it good to reject the evidence of natural world in favor of the arbitrary rules of a religious sect or is it evil?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I do not recall anyone that supports science claiming that the natural world is subject to the rules of science. It is a fantastic example of a straw man argument though. Science does not make rules that reality has to follow. The theories and laws of science are descriptions and explanations of the evidence and are derived from observation of the natural world. It is the natural world that dictates science and not the other way round.

 

[dad]

If there were actual and valid science-based arguments, they'ld exist in the actual scientific literature.
.

No more than if a tooth fairy existed it would be included in Catholic literature.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

By the way, I Googled your claim ("the secretory system came after the flagellum"), and could not find anybody that agreed with you except a Christian apologetics site which made the claim, "This argument is so old that it was already dealt with and refuted in the 2003 ID documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life." I simply would never take my science from such a source - not from you, from the link, or from the ID documentary.

You couldn't? How hard did you look?

"3. INJECTISOME-T3SS DERIVED FROM FLAGELLAR ANCESTORS
The evolutionary relationship between the flagellum and the injectisome has been the subject of considerable debate. Flagella exist in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, while injectisomes have so far only been found in Gram-negative species, suggesting a flagellar T3SS as ancestor [24,54]. However, early phylogenetic studies suggested that both systems share a common ancestor, and have since evolved differently from each other [55]. With the ever-growing number of genome sequences [56,57], it became clear that flagellar components are almost always encoded on the bacterial chromosome and co-evolved with the rest of the genome to a certain degree [58,59], while the genes coding for the injectisome are often encoded on virulence plasmids or pathogenicity islands, and are more closely related to each other than their flagellar counterparts. They are distributed independently of the phylogeny of the respective species, and have probably been frequently transferred between species [38,55,60]. Latest analyses suggest that the ancestral T3SS was used for locomotion and was similar to current-day flagella, while modern injectisomes were derived through a series of gene losses and subsequent acquisitions via a non-flagellar ancestor that did not translocate proteins, leading to a protein translocation machinery [38] (figure 2)."

Apparently harder than you did. Of the two of us, only I found a source that agreed with you, likely your original source. Not surprisingly, you brought a paper from science rather that a creationist source, but also not surprisingly, it doesn't support your contention. The fact of flagella and the secretory system having evolved naturalistically is assumed, as there is evidence it did and none that it was intelligently designed.

The creationist apologetics I linked you to was entitled, "Why the Type III Secretory System Can’t Be a Precursor to the Bacteria Flagellum" your claim. About itself, this site says, "Evolution News & Science Today (EN) provides original reporting and analysis about evolution, neuroscience, bioethics, intelligent design and other science-related issues" and "The articles published at Evolution News are copyright by Discovery Institute"

Sorry, but intelligent design isn't a science-related issue. It's religion.

The article says, "Now under normal evolutionary reasoning, one would take this kind of phylogenetic evidence to indicate that the flagellum long predates the T3SS, and that the T3SS is in no way a precursor (or closely related to a precursor) of the flagellum. But don’t expect evolutionists to use their normal reasoning when trying to oppose potent arguments for intelligent design."

I'm pretty sure that this or some similar creationists site was your source.

Recall that I also posted the following, something you chose not to comment on, so I will:

nothing that is true is known only to Christian apologists. If what you are claiming is true, you ought to be able to produce a reference from a mutually trusted source. If it can only be found on sites like this one, well, I'm not interested. As I said, their methods, agenda, and ethics are not mine and are not to be trusted.

And this panned out this time as well. It's been a 100% effective rule to just reject all creationist sources and insist that the apologist provide documentation from mutually acceptable sources, which on the matters of science, will be sites dedicated to disseminating scientific information rather than promoting creationism.

Incidentally, you're not alone. All creationists ignore the truth of that comment - that there is nothing known only to creationists, and that if only creationists are saying it, it is incorrect. It's perfectly reasonable to request that you use a science source like the one you posted, and as usual, this exchange confirms my claim that creationist sources are appropriately rejected out of hand, and if you go to bona fide science sites and sources as you did, you find nothing supporting creationism.

we know nothing and have no way of separating good beliefs from bad beliefs.

You'll have to speak for yourself there. I told you how I separate correct ideas from incorrect ones, at least how I do it as a secular humanist. It's worked out very well for me. Sorry I couldn't share any of that with you. You'll just have to keep your bad beliefs if you are unwilling or unable to test them empirically to determine which work and which don't.

Science is just another tool to try to help in this quest but people are mistakenly adopting the tool as a new belief.

Science is not just another tool. It is the only tool capable of accurately describing how physical reality will behave under various circumstances. Watch what happens in the world this year as millions or billions of people reject science. Nothing can substitute for science in developing an optimal response to this disaster. Without it, you might listen to antiscientific yahoos and kill yourself with hydroxychloroquine and a bleach chaser.

Religion was the first tool in modern times for this job but it was adopted as a belief system as well.

Religion, by which I mean faith-based thought about the existence of unseen gods and what derives from it, can tell us nothing of value. Just contrast evolutionary theory with creationism, or astrology with astronomy. In each case, the former, an evidence based program, has generated useful ideas that can predict outcomes accurately, whereas the others, both faith-based systems of thought, are also both sterile. Neither idea can be used to make life longer, safer, healthier, less laborious, etc.. So, I culled them from my mental map to my benefit.

Anyway, I guess we're done. That's what I do and it has helped me navigate life more successfully. I tried to share it with you, but was unsuccessful. No problem.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

So your argument against the evolution of flagella, is a reference that further details the evolution of the flagella with more accuracy?

At least he tried. I give him credit for that. His response was with valid science rather than overly-long, laborious posts full of colored fonts, emoticons and lots of pretty pictures that ultimately said puppies are cute and offered nothing to repudiate scientific theories.

 

[dad]

I do not recall anyone that supports science claiming that the natural world is subject to the rules of science. It is a fantastic example of a straw man argument though. Science does not make rules that reality has to follow. The theories and laws of science are descriptions and explanations of the evidence and are derived from observation of the natural world. It is the natural world that dictates science and not the other way round.

Science does not describe or cover the world of believers, God, spirits, history or the future. Those who think it should or claim it does are out to lunch.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Science does not describe or cover the world of believers, God, spirits, history or the future. Those who think it should or claim it does are out to lunch.

I accept this argument that science is not a religion or a belief system. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For finally admitting the truth.

 

[tas8831]

That you say you are only aware of Dr. Behe, and do not know who Drs. Stephen Meyer or Douglas Axe or Jonathan Wells are, is revealing. Apparently, you do not even know the opposition's leaders?

I am aware of all of them. I have read several of Axe's papers and dozens of Meyer's articles (he doesn't actually do science, so I won't call them papers). I have read 2 of Wells' books and his laughable paper on centrosomes being turbines. It was a hoot. I read Behe's first book and a few of his papers and the transcript of his Dover testimony (very damaging to him).
I have also met Werner Gitt (asked him a question that he could not answer). I also had some correspondences with Paul Nelson many years ago, had even set up a tentative meet but it fell through.

Have you heard of Dr. Günter Bechly?

Not until today. Another of the "Expelled" crew...

Have you heard of Dr. Jerry Coyne? Dr. Sean Carroll? Dr. Sean B. Carroll? Dr. William Atchley? Dr. Todd Disotell? Dr. John Flynn? Name dropping is cool.

How can you claim to refute their science-based arguments, when you've never bothered to read them?

How can you claim to refute their science-based arguments, when you've never bothered to read them?

The T3SS is an old argument, I see why you refer to the video...do you understand that it's outdated? From more recent research, it's quite obvious the secretory system came after the flagellum. So the origin of it remains unsolved through natural means. (And "Likely" isn't the language of empirical science.)

Ans so "unsolved" = "designed"?

On what scientific grounds?

Funny thing - if "the" bacterial flagellum was designed, all that does is bring up another questions - designed by what?

Surely not the thing that 'designed' the hyena pseudopenis!

 

[tas8831]

Exactly!

But do you believe all descendants of fish are....fish?
You do if you believe in Common Descent.

And so do you since you claim not to be a creationist.

 

[tas8831]

Excellent article! Everyone should read this.....
"Fish. They seem so innocent and harmless. But secretly, they're subverting scientific law and order."

"That's according to a group of scientists nicknamed *cladists for their support of a scientific classification system of species based on clades."
* https://www.conservationmagazine.org/2009/11/science-vs-instinct/

"A clade is a fancy term for all of and only the modern species descended via evolution from a specific common ancestor."

OK so here we have "cladists" who support the "scientific classification system of species based on clades"....so who invented the the classification system? Not evolutionists surely???? Is that a red flag?

What other gems can we glean...?

"This is where fish get into trouble. A lot of trouble. Trouble the size of an elephant, a whale, and an emperor penguin all put together.

That's because all life evolved out of the water. Reptiles, mammals, birds - even dinosaurs - all came from something that we would say looked pretty much like a fish. And there's so much more diversity among what we call "fish" in every day conversation that they spread far around the outskirts of these subgroups.

Here's a simplified depiction of the problem at hand:

Petter Bøckman/Wikimedia Commons/Tech Insider

I know which makes more sense to me....

Who said that all vertebrates must be related?

As you can see, there's no way to draw a clade that will encompass everything we call a fish without snagging a mouse or a manatee along the way.

So for the cladists, either there is no such thing as fish - or we're fish too."

I have heard that we are related to bananas as well....how amazing. Am I eating a relative with my breakfast cereal?

"Of course, the cladists' approach to species is useful for asking certain questions. When evolution has literally built everything you are thinking about, classifying all those things based on how evolution works makes a lot of sense.

But it's hard not to find the proclaimed death of the idea of a fish a little absurd."

I couldn't agree more......absurd is a good description IMO. What a brilliant finish.

Thanks for the link.

This is your usual schtick. Nit-pick the "jargon" that you cannot understand and miss the forest for the trees.

So predictable.