Wouldn’t be closed off? Insane. Evolution is demonstrable. From vestigial bones in whales to the nerve in a giraffe’s neck, from ring species to life in volcanic vents in the deep ocean or in the nuclear waste of reactors, from the fusion of chromosome number two to the mapping of the gnome, the evidence for evolution can fill its own library, and you would not be opposed to it? Seriously, what kind of education did you have as a child? You should sue your teachers.
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C’mon, Cog, give the guy a break. If he doesn’t even know/understand BASIC junior high school level human biology and brain function, how can you possibly expect him to comprehend evolution?
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It’s utterly amazing the disinformation a child in the USA can grow up with. PEW Research says,
Church of God 11% hold university degrees. 47% HS only. 17% less than HS.
American Baptists 12% with University. 43% have HS only. 17% less than HS.
JW, 12% for Uni, 44% HS. Highest on the chart, 19% less than HS.
The more successful religions…
Jewish, 59% University and 9% with only a HS degree. 3% Less tgab HS
Unitarian Universalist 67% with University degrees, 23% HS only. 0% Less than HS
HINDU - 77% with University degrees, 11% with HS only. But 10% with less than HS.
You’re wrong…
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True, though it does expose the biblical creation myth as errant nonsense.
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As opposed to inexplicable magic? Irreducible complexity has been widely debunked, only creationists cling to this failed argument. Though of course it lends no credence to any deity or creation myth, that’s just a false dichotomy.
Evolution is an objective scientific fact. However, in the astronomically unlikely event evolution was substantively or even completely reversed, setting the field of biology back to naught, this wouldn’t lend any credence to unevidenced superstition, and creation myths.
You used it as a reductio ad absurdum fallacy. Ridiculing a known scientific fact, in order to champion an unevidenced appeal to mystery, involving inexplicable magic, from an archaic superstition and its creation myth, that has no explanatory powers whatsoever.
These creationist canards are well known here, you simply won’t fool anyone with such nonsense and propaganda. Most obviously because no one is going to be fooled by such an obvious false dichotomy fallacy, as we are not limited to two choices, one of which is supported by all the objective scientific evidence, and the other is an archaic unevidenced superstition.
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha “You should learn your EVOLUTION” There is no such thing as "macroevolution’ At no time, at no place, in no way,. did one existant being give birth to something completely different than itself. How fucking stuipid are you. Ducks do not give birth to Chimps. Are you really that fucking stupid? There is “EVOLUTION” small changes in the frequecy of a population that occur over time. THAT’S IT, NOTHING MORE.
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This one is straight out of the apologist’s handbook. Calilasseia provided a very comprehensive explanation with references and every legitimate scientific source one could imagine. Did our friend actually take the time to read and learn? Obviously not, because the continuing questions were dealt with by Calilasseia.
@Cr2187 displays every tendency NOT to learn and just keeps coming up with some of the most obtuse questions one can imagine.
What was the final straw for me was the question that assumed that humans were direct descendants of chimpanzees and why were they still here.
I am of the opinion that Cr2187 does not intend to troll, and believes he is coming up with insightful and valid questions. What is being displayed is a refusal to learn.
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At least you can make the rebuttal public for those that are willing to learn. I was just watching Evangilic Christians in the USA. Evangelical Christians in the USA | DW Documentary - YouTube This is just stupid scary.
That was my emotion too. The level of indoctrination is directly out of a dictator’s handbook. But I guess the theists invented it first. Fundamentally no difference between these theists and the Nazi youth groups and North Koreans.
When I saw how they were collecting money and using large garbage bins, that is straight out of a crime movie, the drug dealers doing the very same actions. And making money off an addiction.
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Now that is a poster!
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And the in tray is full again …
Well since I already provided an example, in the form of the emergence of antifreeze glycoproteins in Antarctic Notothenioid fishes, your feeble attempt at another ignroant mythology fanboy “gotcha” merely makes me laugh the usual dark, sardonic laugh that is issued whenever this sort of mythology fanboy cant is peddled.
Oh, by the way, apparently you’re unaware that scientists have already worked upon the problem lung evolution, and worked out several of the genes responsible. Indeed, even Darwin had a word to say on this matter, before the modern research that dealt with the problem, viz:
Oh, and with respect to lung evolution, guess what? There are scientific papers covering this very topic, that Darwin wrote about in that passage above. For example:
A Functional Analysis Of The Aquatic And Aerial Respiratory Movements Of An African Lungfish by B. R. McMahon, Journal of Experimental Biology, 51: 407-430 (1969)
Deconvoluting Lung Evolution Using Functional/Comparative Genomics by John S. Torday and Virender K. Rehan, American Journal of Respiratory Cell & Molecular Biology, 31(1): 8-12 (2004)
Did Lungs And The Intracardiac Shunt Evolve To Oxygenate The Heart In Vertebrates? by Colleen Farmer, Palaeobiology, 23(3): 358-372 (1998)
Fgfr2 Is Required For Limb Outgrowth And Lung Branching Morphogenesis by Esther Arman, Rebecca Haffner-Krausz, Marat Gorivodsky, and Peter Lonai, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 96(21):, 11895-11899 (12th October 1999)
New Perspectives On The Evolution Of Lung Ventilation Mechanisms In Vertebrates by E. L. Brainerd, Experimental Biology Online, 4: 1-28 (1999)
Pulmonary Surfactant The Key To The Evolution Of Air Breathing by Christopher B. Daniels and Sandra Orgeig, News In Physiological Science, 18: 151-157 (August 2003)
This is, of course, an incomplete list, as there are dozens more papers in this vein to be searched for and read, though this is a taks mythology fanboys usually dispense with when peddling their fake “gotchas”.
I’ll shortly cover one of the above papers in more detail, but this will be a substantial dissertation. 
And now, it’s time to cover one of those papers on lung evolution in more detail, viz:
Deconvoluting Lung Evolution Using Functional/Comparative Genomics by John S. Torday and Virender K. Rehan, American Journal of Respiratory Cell & Molecular Biology, 31(1): 8-12 (2004)
In more detail, we have, and this is pretty much the entire paper I’m quoting here, so quote mining will be easy to detect …
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A travesty of the actual scientific findings.
What actually happened, is that scientists worked out what steps could have arisen naturally via evolution to produce the observed results.
And here we have another typical mythology fanboy fallacy at work, namely the duplicitous conflation of the intellectual effort required to work out how a testable natural process achieved an observable result, with that process itself.
Just because it requires intelligence on the part of humans to work out what’s going on in the natural world, doesn’t mean that the testable natural processes involved are in any way “sentient”. It merely means that the processes in question operated in a manner that isn’t trivially obvious at first sight. Said non-trivial operation can occur without any “sentient” or “intelligent” input, and that’s precisely what the scientists in question found when they alighted upon the requisite pathways for eye evolution, which, in case you never bothered reading the requisite scientific papers, has occurred independently at least 40 times in different organismal lineages.
Indeed, I have in my collection, wait for it, fifty three scientific papers covering the evolution of the eye, none of which require a cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology to provide an explanation. Indeed, those papers list several genes that are implicated in both the evolution of the eye, and the morphology of the resulting eyes, and some of those papers have documented how this has been determined by direct experimental manipulation of the genes in question.
For that matter, one of the papers in my collection, namely this one:
Eyed Cave Fish In A Karst Window by Luis Espinasa and Richard Borowsky, Journal of Cave and Karst Studies, 62(3): 180-183 (2000)
documents research work establishing that blind cave fishes that lost their eyes while in darkness, regained working eyes when a karst window opened in the cave admitting light therein. Indeed, that paper is possibly a masterwork with respect to the relevant science, and it’s worth covering in depth directly, which I shall now do:
So here, we have the first cited evidence that when a blind cave population was, by a serendipitous accident, granted readmission to daytime light sources, some of the blind cave fishes regained their eyes over time.
The paper opens as follows:
So, there exists a cave in Mexico called Caballo Moro, that has a karst window admitting light, and within this cave, within reach of the light admitted by the karst window, there is a population of Astyanax mexicanus. This population contains fishes that have lost their eyes, conforming to the phenotype that was once described via the taxon Anophthichthys jordani, that taxon now recognised as a junior ynonym of Astyanax mexicanus. However, the population contains fishes with functioning eyes. It is tempting to think that the eyed fishes are members of a surface-dwelling population that have become intermingled with the cave fishes, and, courtesy of still having access to light, retained their eyes. The population genetics of Astyanax mexicanus have been extensively studied, and as a consequence, a great deal is known about the surface-dwelling and cave-dwelling populations of these fishes, including the fact that there exist distinct genetic markers for distinct populations, allowing scientists to alight upon the fact that the eye-loss phenotype has arisen in multiple separate populations independently, via a range of acquired mutations. The relevant paper containing evidence for this is one I’ve already cited above, namely:
Evidence For Multiple Genetic Forms With Similar Eyeless Phenotypes In The Blind Cavefish, Astyanax mexicanus by Thomas E. Dowling, David P. Martasian and William R. Jeffery, Molecular & Biological Evolution, 19(4): 446-455 (2002)
I’ll leave that paper aside for the moment, as I’ve dealt with it elsewhere in the past, and can always return to it in detail in another post. However, that paper establishes that different cave populations of Astyanax mexicanus possess an eyeless phenotype arising via different sets of mutations in the genes responsible for eye development (namely Pax6, shh and twhh, about which I have posted in the past, including the paper covering Pax6 as a master gene in eye development). Likewise, populations of the surface dwelling eyed phenotype have genetic markers identifying them as belonging to particular populations, where those populations experience little or no gene flow with other populations, and consequently, the provenance of a fish can be determined with reasonable precision by appropriate genetic analysis. The authors of the paper I am covering here have established that the eyed phenotype fishes in the Caballo Moro karst window cave possess genetic markers identifying them as having derived from ancestral eyeless stock. Which means that these fishes had eyeless ancestors, and consequently regained functioning eyes once light was present.
So, it remains to cover the present paper in more detail, and examine the evidence presented therein. Let’s do that shall we?
And thus, the groundwork is laid for what follows. Namely, that there is no obvious source of eyed fishes from surface or epigean populations, with the cave running for 11 Km underground, without capturing a surface stream between the cave’s entrance pit and the karst window illuminating the population of interest. Moreover, the nearest population of epigean fishes is 4 Km distant from the cave, and there is no obvious connection between the body of water containing that epigean population, and the mixed population of fishes in the karst window lake, which comprises a mixture of epigean and hypogean (cave-phenotype) fishes. So, the possibilities are:
[1] The epigean phenotype fishes (possessing pigmentation and functional eyes) are a recent arrival, courtesy of an as yet unknown connection between the cave system and a surface body of water supplying these fishes;
[2] The epigean phenotype fishes have coexisted with the hypogean phenotype (eyeless and depigmented) fishes for an extended period of time with little or no interbreeding;
[3] The epigean phenotype fishes have arisen from hypogean ancestors.
[1] is considered unlikely by the authors, given the known geography of the cave system, but is required to be ruled out evidentially. [2] poses problems with respect to the appearance of an isolating mechanism between the two phenotypes, given that prior breeding experiments have established that epigean and hypogean fishes are capable of mating and producing offspring. [3], meanwhile, would provide an extremely interesting example of evolution reversing a character change that had previously occurred in these fishes, but requires evidential support before the postulate can be considered valid. So, let’s see what the authors discovered upon further analysis! First, the authors outline their experimental procedures:
Now, comes the analytical results!
Indeed, the accompanying figure is quite impressive (see Table 1 charting the RAPD bands for the various populations). The Caballo Moro fishes are manifestly members of a well-defined and genetically distinct grouping, exhibit a well-defined clustering of bands from the DNA analysis that are only partially shared with individuals from the Molino and Vasquez caves (the other two cave populations sampled), and there are marked differences between the Río Frío, Río Boquillas and Rio Comandante fishes and those from Caballo Moro.
Moving on:
Basically, the above tests establish that the Caballo Moro fish form a genetically distinct group, and that furthermore, there exists an interesting set of relations between the eyed and eyeless fishes, which closely matches that of a Monte Carlo simulation of the emergence of eyed and eyeless fishes in that group.
With that, it’s time to move on to the authors’ discussion of their results:
Now the authors are being appropriately cautious here, with respect to the data that they have obtained, but, that data is more consistent with the hypothesis of the eyed fishes of Caballo Moro having arisen from eyeless ancestors, than it is with competing hypotheses. Which means, if confirmed by more in-depth study involving larger data sets, that the eyed specimens of Astyanax mexicanus resident in the Caballo Moro karst window lake are fishes that have regained functional eyes, courtesy of appropriate mutations being positively selected for in their lineage. It would be interesting to examine the genetic data for the Pax6, shh and twhh genes for these fishes, as, given their known role in the appearance of the eyeless phenotype in other hypogean lineages of Astyanax mexicanus.
Now, aside from the fact that the above refutes wholesale any notion that selection cannot affect the dissemination of particular genes, or shape the inheritance thereof, the above findings also drive a tank battalion through creationist quote mining of Crow’s paper, because here we have an instance of purported ‘genetic deterioration’ being thrown into full reverse by evolutionary processes, something which creationist assertions about “genomic entropy” claim simply cannot happen. Once again, the real world demonstrates that blind creationist assertion is nothing more than that - blind assertion.
So, looks like the evidence for the active evolution of these fishes is pretty compelling, along with their eyes.
Note that the authors considered four different hypotheses for the data obtained, and provided cogent reasons for their choice of which hypothesis best fits the data. One of the reasons that this paper is a particularly welcome addition to my collection.
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Hey Cal. Big fan. Not to be petty, but you spelled “which” wrong in the above.
A joke … Get it? You’re super smart, but even you can make spelling mistakes? Clever, right?
I’m kidding. I’m not actually that anally retentive (even if I AM taking a dump at the moment).
At this point, I’m minded to expound upon pertinent observations that apply not only in this thread, but in numerous others too.
First of all, it’s pretty obvious that the entire mythology fanboy modus operandi consists, at bottom, of treating the unsupported assertions of their favourite choice of mythology, as purportedly constituting “axioms” about the world, regardless of how much data from observational reality bombards the requisite presumption with lethally falsifying discoursive artillery. They’ve been taught from the outset, to treat certain ideas as “sacred”, and therefore to be insulated from scrutiny wherever possible, and to spoon up the apologetic fabrications of their various “holy men” in the same uncritical manner. In particular, they’ve been taught, wrongly and dishonestly, that their attachment to a cartoon magic man from a goat herder mythology is to be the sole arbiter of “truth”, and is to override every finding of every properly constructed rigorous academic discipline, particularly when the findings of said rigorous academic disciplines disagree with the assertions of their mythologies. At which point, it’s apologetics time - the business of casting ineffectual spells to try and hand-wave away the inconvenient data.
The possibility that their “holy men” could be engaging in fabrication never enters the largely empty headspace of these people. Instead of asking, for example, what scientists actually postulate on a topic, they simply slurp up whatever strawman caricatures thereof are fed to them by the same “holy men”, who also have never bothered to learn what is actually postulated by the relevant scientists. Rigorous historiography is also summarily dismissed via the same process, especially if it points to key mythological assertions being not merely wrong, but fatuous and absurd.
Instead, they simply nod their heads and treat the requisite fabrications (and in some case, outright bare faced lies) as The Truth™, and do so simply because said fabrications are consonant with their naive view of the world and its operation. None of them ever bother to ask themselves if the apologetic fabrications they’re being fed are a travesty of actual scientific thinking, one erected duplicitously as a means of avoiding the addressing of the actual postulates or the actual data being misrepresented by said fabrications.
On the other hand, the first port of call for those who paid attention in class, is the actual peer reviewed literature from the requisite disciplines, and should especially be the first port of call for anyone harbouring proper suspicion of mythology fanboy assertions, particularly when those assertions purport to be a genuine representation of scientific thinking. All too often, the astute and diligent will find the opposite - namely, that the assertions in question constitute blatantly mendacious warping of the requisite scientific (or other academic) thinking.
At this point, it’s also apposite to deal with another tiresome mythology fanboy canard, namely, that our recourse to scientific papers purportedly constitutes an “appeal to authority”. Er, no. First of all, even scientists with previously hard-won reputations can come unstuck, because they develop too fond an attachment to a bad idea, and an essential part of scientific training consists of the business of learning when this is happening. Second, even a neophyte can enter the field, and provide a new insight, launching a stellar career in the process. Third, the ultimate arbiter of whether or not a postulate in science is a good or bad postulate, is whether or not that postulate is in accord with the relevant body of observational data. Contrary to the lies peddled in certain mythology fanboy quarters in this vein, there is no reliance upon “credentials” of the sort we see in the mythology fanboy alternative universe. In the realm of science, “credentials” only tell us what someone got right in the past.
But there’s more. Namely, scientists have a vested interest in maintaining scrupulous levels of honesty within the scientific realm, because numerous scientific ideas are both conceptually difficult and counter-intuitive, and trust in those ideas can only be maintained if scientists exert diligent effort to be honest. Scientists have a very strong incentive to purge dishonest and fabricated works from the body of knowledge being compiled. Not least because in the present, policy decisions rely for their success or their failure upon their consonance with scientific findings, and maintaining the trust of decision makers, many of whom have a parlous scientific education to begin with, is vital if we are to avoid policy disaster. Recent history is teaching us that lesson with a vengeance of late, or more correctly, is teaching those of us who learned to listen properly - that’s a matter for a separate post at some future point.
Indeed, that need to maintain honesty in the public arena, isn’t so much motivated by selfish funding concerns (which in the case of many scientists, are actually a long way down the list of priorities), despite various well-poisoning lies to this effect by the usual suspects, but instead, is motivated by the need to maintain the continuance of the human species in the face of various existential threats. Two big such threats are looming before us right now, in the form of anthropogenic climate change and accompanying ecological collapse, and if we don’t listen to the scientists with respect to these, then it’s Game Over.
It doesn’t matter how many billions have been salted away in offshore slush funds in the Cayman Islands by fossil fuel company executives, how many bling mansions they’ve collected or how many penis-extension Bond villain yachts they own, none of this will matter if their actions result in Planet Earth being turned into Venus Mark II. No amount of money is going to buy them out of that shit if it hits the fan. Fantasies about escaping into space to leave the plebs to fry are just that - fantasies. Likewise, entertaining warped fantasies about the “rapture”, and yearning for a cartoon magic man to beam you up into his celestial North Korea in the sky, is going to get you nowhere, except in a hole in the ground alongside the rest of us. Worse still, if you act to accelerate the looming of various existential threats as a result of said fantasies, then you’re a cosmic scale narcissist and a dangerous sociopath to boot.
The mere fact that mythology fanboys have to peddle lies of the sort I’ve described above, in order to prop up their attachment to their sad little mythologies, demonstrates amply how worthless those mythologies actually are, except perhaps for perverse entertainment purposes. If your brand of mythology fanboyism leads you not only to entertain egregious lies about science (and atheism), but to peddle those lies in public before a global audience, then you need to take a good, long, hard look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself if you really want to be regarded by a global audience as a pathological and compulsive liar for your doctrine.
One of the ironies I shall leave my readers with, is that those most in need of reading this and understanding the concepts presented herein in depth, will be the most likely to dismiss it summarily.
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And that is my very strong opinion.
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LOL… No Shit! LOL But those of us who do read it, appreciate the time, effort, and quality of discourse.
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THIS 
is what first for my attention when I started to ween my addiction to hopeium.
Often the “fakes” were touted in religious circles as proof of science being inaccurate, stupid, foolishness (compared to our mythological deity’s wisdom).
I one day got to thinking 
WHO exactly EXPOSED the FAKE or BAD SCIENCE??? Oh right… science.
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