Wheel Argument

[Riverwolf]

In short be careful, I know Paleontology isn't everyones strong suit, but simple mistakes can be very damaging.

wa:do

It's probably thanks to such mistakes that creationists fail to understand evolution.

 

[painted wolf]

It certainly makes those of us who are trying to become professional evolutionary biologists have to work a lot harder to clear things up.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

Well, crap in a handbasket. See, this is why these questions should really only be answered by people whose knowledge extends beyond that which is provided by Google.

I think the important lessons are:

1) If you don't know something, don't be afraid to say so... the worst thing you can do is bull your way through and be found to be talking out your butt... it makes all of us suspect.

2) Don't have a knee-jerk reaction to immediately take the opposite stance of the creationists. In many cases they are not 100% wrong, but have skewed view of things. Often due to misinformation or simple lack of information.

3) If you are looking for information on-line, be very careful with your sources.

wa:do

 

[Gabethewiking]

I think the important lessons are:

1) If you don't know something, don't be afraid to say so... the worst thing you can do is bull your way through and be found to be talking out your butt... it makes all of us suspect.

2) Don't have a knee-jerk reaction to immediately take the opposite stance of the creationists. In many cases they are not 100% wrong, but have skewed view of things. Often due to misinformation or simple lack of information.

3) If you are looking for information on-line, be very careful with your sources.

wa:do

Yeah, some of the most reliable ones (recommended to use) are CNN.com, FOXnews.com and CreationWiki.org, these are the best of the best, Crema de la Creme.

 

[painted wolf]

At least all of them realized that mammals and dinosaurs lived together... I have no idea where people got the idea that there were no mammals during the mesozoic.

I'd direct people to Science and Nature, but you can't read them without a subscription.
PNAS and PLOS are good... and I have a few more obscure journals such as Acta paleontologica... but I don't always have time to find the exact paper for you guys.

This is a good site to keep an eye on: Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology

wa:do

 

[Autodidact]

Guys I hate to break it to you... but there were lots of mammals during the age of dinosaurs... in fact we mammals appear at the same time as they do. Some early mammals ate dinosaurs.

Granted these were very primitive groups of mammals, most of which don't survive anymore.

Some mesozoic mammal links:
Category:Mesozoic mammals - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is a great image showing the amazing diversity that mammals had during the dinosaurs time... they filled many of the niches that they still do today.

In short be careful, I know Paleontology isn't everyones strong suit, but simple mistakes can be very damaging.

wa:do

Thanks as always. My mind leapt right to bunnies and tigers, forgetting entirely the little Jurassic mammals.

 

[painted wolf]

Thanks as always. My mind leapt right to bunnies and tigers, forgetting entirely the little Jurassic mammals.

It may be, that is what the creationist who used the argument intended. It brings up images of dinosaurs and mammoths and man running around together.

wa:do

 

[linwood]

Im currently attending a conference and I really need to hear your view.

The guy speaking is a creationist / christian.

Alright, so basically in this conference the person talking exclaims that just because different species have simlitaries (5 fingers for a hand, 4 toes for a foot, etc) it doesnt mean they shared a comment ancestry.

He used an example of a WHEEL.

A unicycle (1 wheel) and a bicycle (2 wheel) are not the same, but they use both the same part, as any intelligent designer would make.

He also exclaims that just because a cat has a tail, and a dog has a tail, it doesnt mean they have a common ancestry.

I want to prove him wrong, or I want someone on the forums to end this argument. Please discuss!

If you want to prove him wrong then don`t let him frame the argument.

Instead of dealing with his obviously asinine watchmaker argument focus on his misrepresentations.

Alright, so basically in this conference the person talking exclaims that just because different species have simlitaries (5 fingers for a hand, 4 toes for a foot, etc) it doesnt mean they shared a comment ancestry.

Nobody ever said that similar external physiology was evidence for common ancestry.
Why let him get away with implying it is?

Instead tell him while his false strawman of an argument is indeed correct and similar features proves nothing show him what does support evolution.

Genetics.

You can`t argue with the obvious genetic similarities that led to different species.

The comparison of the chimp genome to the human genome is absolute objective evidence of common ancestry.

 

[enchanted_one1975]

A bicycle and unicycle may be totally different, but that doesn't mean that one manufacturer cannot produce them both. Just because something does not prove a concept does not mean that it disproves the same concept.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I agree with you guys about how bicycle are inanimate objects and how the speaker suggests there is a designer is wrong.

He also said "If the comit killed the dinosaurs, then what about ducks? They should be gone to". Yet the truth is, he's suggesting that ducks were at the same period of time as dinosaurs. He's mixing the concept of creationist and evolution.

Also, it seems like he's working from a faulty understanding in another way: it's not like the comet that killed the dinosaurs only killed dinosaurs. It wiped most of the life off the surface of the Earth. All the dinosaurs died out; so did most of the mammals living at the time.

I heard two excellent analogies for the incident a while back in a lecture on the subject. The lecturer (a physicist, IIRC) talked about the modelling he had done of the impact.

Imagine the temperature of a pizza oven. As the meteor hit the Earth and blasted millions of tonnes of ejacta, quite a bit of it was actually thrown up into space, where it spread out and eventually fell back to Earth. The heat from all this material burning up as it re-entered the atmosphere would have been so great the temperature at ground level over most of the Earth's surface would have been hotter than a pizza oven for (IIRC) at least several hours. Animals would have boiled and then burned. Forests would have burst into flames. It was literally a catastrophic event. The main reason that our ancestors survived was that they were small tunnel-dwellers, and enough of them were down below the surface, sheltered from the heat to "ride out" the destruction.

For another analogy, he told us about a biologist friend who had come up with a computer program that had the geographic ranges of all the different species of land animal. With this software, you could specify an area of the planet and it would tell you how many species would be wiped out if all life in that area were destroyed.

A huge number of species disappeared at the time that the dinosaurs did. To get that level of destruction today, i.e. to make that percentage of the existing species go extinct, the destruction would have to wipe out all land animals on all land masses everywhere on Earth, except for New Zealand. That's what it would take to have the level of destruction that we see occurred 65 million years ago.

Edit: here's the lecture in case you're curious: http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bi?1215979200000

 

[painted wolf]

Also remember that birds have one key ability that the non-avian dinosaurs didn't... they could fly to someplace else to find food.

But, yes the K/T event wiped out more than just the non-avian dinosaurs.. it took out marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs, pliosaurs and mososaurs. Took out the Pterosaurs and most of the crocodillians and even two major groups of birds. (only one group of birds survived)
Many groups of mammals got wiped out (at least half of the mammal groups died out, leaving us with just three today).
Ammonites and scads of other inverts... loads of fish groups (including whale sized plankton eating bony fish) and several kinds of plants never recovered.

It was a bad day for everyone.

wa:do

 

[Quagmire]

The Wheel Argument? Sounds like circular reasoning to me.

A unicycle (1 wheel) and a bicycle (2 wheel) are not the same, but they use both the same part, as any intelligent designer would make.

He also exclaims that just because a cat has a tail, and a dog has a tail, it doesnt mean they have a common ancestry.

Here ya go Platypus. Turns out, the Unicycle evolved as an innovation on the Penny-Farthing.

Unicycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Penny-Farthing was the first devise to be dubbed "bicycle";

From Wiki:
"Penny-farthing, high wheel, high wheeler, and ordinary are all terms used to describe a type of bicycle with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel that was popular after the boneshaker, until the development of the safety bicycle, in the 1880s.[1] They were the first machines to be called 'bicycles'.[2]"


So the Unicycle actually is a direct technological descendant of the bicycle.

There's a counter-argument in there somewhere.

 

[Platypus]

Also remember that birds have one key ability that the non-avian dinosaurs didn't... they could fly to someplace else to find food.

But, yes the K/T event wiped out more than just the non-avian dinosaurs.. it took out marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs, pliosaurs and mososaurs. Took out the Pterosaurs and most of the crocodillians and even two major groups of birds. (only one group of birds survived)
Many groups of mammals got wiped out (at least half of the mammal groups died out, leaving us with just three today).
Ammonites and scads of other inverts... loads of fish groups (including whale sized plankton eating bony fish) and several kinds of plants never recovered.

It was a bad day for everyone.

wa:do

Haha, WHAT? Whale size plankton damn I would LOVE to read up on that, can you give me a name?

And I guess all the "big" creatures died out, and smaller animals live and prosper.

Edit: I think you mean Giant "plankton-eating" bony fish, not giant plankton eating fish... But of course im talking out of the knowledge provided by google, and not my own.

 

[painted wolf]

woops....yeah I ment the fish was whale sized...It can be tricky to catch everything with a baby in one arm. (not that I was that great a writer before )

Anyway, the most studied species is Leedsichthys but two new species Bonnerichthys and Rhinconichthys were studied recently.. I haven't had time to read the paper yet myself (I'm a bit behind on my primary literature reading), but here is a link to the abstract.
100-Million-Year Dynasty of Giant Planktivorous Bony Fishes in the Mesozoic Seas -- Friedman et al. 327 (5968): 990 -- Science

wa:do